Slashdot Mirror

I read the post you linked. It provided a perfect example of what I was saying. If you read to the bottom it concludes with "However, people will not honestly vote. Hill-dogg supporters will look at Obama's slight lead, and since they'd much rather prefer Hill-dogg instead of Obama, they vote like this: Hill-dogg 10, Obama 1, McCain 0. Obama supporters, worried about their slight lead, vote the converse. McCain supporters vote McCain 10, Hill-dogg 0, Obama 0.

If you tweak that "Obama 1" into "Obama 0", you'll see that his example has degenerated exactly the way I said it would. It turns into approval voting with people using the limit values - 0 and 10.

His example was intended to prove what approval voting is BAD... intended to prove how and why approval voting will elect the worst candidate last choice candiate... but it also showed the min-max effect turning range voting into 0 1 approval voting.

I give a full explanation why there is never ever ever any valid reason to vote anything except 0 or 9 in this post.

The best voting system is called Condorcet voting. You put the candidates in order, like Hillary #1 Barack #2 and McCain #3. Condocet then look at it as a bunch of 1v1 races. It looks at Hillary-vs-McCain, Barack-vs-McCain, and Hillary-vs-Obama as three seperate races. With 60% Democrats, presumably Hillary would beat McCain in that race, and Obama would beat McCain in that other race. It would also look across all voters to decide Hillary-vs-Obama. Democrats might have some light preference one way or the other, but in fact it would likely be the Republicans overwhelmingly deciding that race based upon which candidate they found less offensive - which candidate they put in their second slot. Condorcet voting finds the best most "central" candidate.

By a variety of mathematically reasonable standards of measurement, Condorcet is provably the best voting system when there are more than two candidates

I highly recommend the website Accurate Democracy.
They give an excellent discussion of Condorcet and a variety of other problems of democracy and solutions to building the best possible democracy. He have learned a lot about how political and election systems work in the last few hundred years. The authors of the US Constitution were brilliant guys, but there's a lot they just didn't know, and in a number of ways our system of government is flawed or just plain broken, and in many cases we do know how to fix it. It just tends to be politically impossible impossible to have our system vote to fix itself. The biases in place and those who benefit from the current power distribution have no interest in surrendering those selfserving advantages. For example it is virtually impossible to make any change to the presidential election process because any change will create a short term benefit towards either the Democrats or the Republicans, so the other side will always rationalize arguments to reject it.

If by any chance you found a new Democratic government from scratch somewhere else, I'd be more than happy to join up to use all of the accumulated knowledge from math and history and sociology and every other field of human knowledge to design the best possible mechanisms of Democracy we know how :D

P.S.
If you wanted to make the link in your post a proper clickable link, it goes like this:
<A href="address">text</A>

You write:
<A href="http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=969061&cid=25081019">Hello there!</A>

and it shows up like this:
Hello there!

-

Single Transferrable Vote is what you want.

No, if we're going to re-write the election system then we we should go with the mathematically best one, and that is Condorcet. There are cases where Single Transferrable Vote clearly elects the "wrong" candidate in comparison to Condorcet.

In the voting booth the election process for Condorcet is exactly the same as Single Transferrable Vote. As you said, "place a 1 next to your first choice candidate, a 2 in your second choice candidate, and so on".

I strongly recommend the website accuratedemocracy.com. They give a full explanation and analysis of Single Transferrable Vote and Condorcet voting and many other issues and systems for building the best possible Democracy and escaping various problems of politics. Awesome site.

-

And I bet you know nothing of Arrow's Theorem that lists a number of voting criteria and proves that it's impossible to meet them all.

A bet you'd lose :)

I suggested and discussed the Condorcet method because it it is generally considered the best known method for running a multi-candidate election for an office such as presidet.

in a multi-seat election

You're absolutely right that I did not address the multi-seat legislature elections. I agree that those elections could use an overhaul as well, and that they do indeen involve different considerations. A proportional election system would be better... but an ensemble council would be even better tah a proportional system. (Ensemble council is mostly proportional, but also adds a stabilizing centrist minority elected through a Condorcet style proceedure.)

For anyone interested in learning more about how to best design an accurate democratic system, I higjly recommend the website Accurate Democracy. It covers all of this in great detail, and far more. It gives excellent examples and explanations of how and why different mechanisms of democracy fail, and how to fix them.

Even just reading the front page is incredibly informative and powerful. A must-read page.

-

Of course, if everybody voted honestly instead of strategically there wouldn't be a problem either.

Not true. You still get the spoiler effect under our system even with 100% honest voting. Good and reasonable candidates will split good and reasonable voters, while a worse candidate merely needs to catch a plurality vote in some off-center direction. The situation just becomes worse with more than three candidates.

Condorcet voting

Yes, Condorcet is by far the best system. It is what we really need to institutue. IRV is a poor substitute, but an easier sell to the public. People cen easily "get" the idea of IRV in a sentence or two, but you damn near need to be a mathemtician or programmer to understand the Condorcet system :( That makes it a hard sell.

Have you seen the Accurate Democracy website? An AWSOME source on designing the best democratic system. It includes an excellect expanations of the problems of our current system and of systems like Condorcet.

I see your SIG is for the Constitution party. It is funny point - and a huge testimony towards the Condorcet system - that you and I agree it is the way to run our country and resolve differences. I'm not quire sure if I would rank the Constitution party above or below the Communist party, chuckle. You and I probably dissagree on nearly everything, but we can come together on this.

Duopoly polarized divisive politics is more harmful to the country than any particular issue.

-

Our current electorial system only allows two viable parties. If you attempted to institute a "centrist" party it would be counter productive unless/until you can actually seize enough of the vote to become the number one party. Until then you are stealling more votes away from whichever of the two main parties is more reasonable and less extremist. For example the Republican party would rally around the diehard religious right. I'm not sure what (if any) equivalant there is for the Democrats, but t
hey too would attempt to rally around a diehard extreme. Either way you're makign the situation worse untill you can actually win. And people on either side would rather vote for the "lesser of two evils" of one of the radical parties than to throw their vote away on a non-viable centrist party and winding up with the greater of two evils.

The problem is the electorial system. Under our current system you could have an election between Mother Theresa and George Washington and Mahatma Ghandi and Abraham Lincoln and Einstein and Thomas Jefferson and the Pope and Florence Nightengale and Dr Martin Luther King Jr and Benjamin Franklin and JFK and HITLER.... and what would happen? All of the good and reasonable voters would split their votes fairly evenly across the good candidates giving them about 7% each. The 8% dedicated psychos would all vote for Hitler.

We use a "plurality" election system. The highest single candidate wins, no matter what percentage he gets. With a 7% 7% 7 7% 7% 7% 7% 7% 7% 7% 7% 7% 7% 8% vote goes to the 8% candidate. Hitler wins with 8%.

It's much the same with three candidates. Two good and reasonable candidates will split the votes of good and reasonable voters while a worse candidate merely needs to grab 34% of voters off in some radical and emotionally charged direction.

There are much better electorial systems. The best such system is called Condorcet voting, though the better known (but less optimal) system is called Instant Runoff Voting. In each of these systems you get to rank the candidates. In such a system 8% of the voters might rank Hitler first, but everyone else will rank him dead last. Hitler might start out in "first place", but he will quickly get knocked out because he has no broad support. Condorcet voting (and to a lesser extent Instant Runoff voting) ensure a candidate with broad support, ensure that a centrist candidate wins. With these systems you may not get to elect your first choice candidate, but you will probably get your second choice candidate. You can someone who is at least acceptable to almost everyone.

You can read more about it here if you're interested.

-

With the Electoral Collage system in place a candidate must win the hearts of all different kinds of people in all different kinds of places. They must represent both city and country, north and south, easterners and westerners.

This is so wrong that I don't even know were to attack it, LOL.

There is absolutely no reason you can't win with the the top X city areas for 270 points, or top X country area for 270 points, or the northernmost 270 votes, or the southernmost 270 points or the easternmost 270 points, or the westernmost 270 points. I could work out the 6 different lists to do them, but is there any point?

The fact is that the electorial college is *SO* broken that a candidate can get 22% of the total voters and beat an opponent who gets 78% of the total voters. That may be an extreme case, but it's just obscenely STUPID.

Trying to change a political system is almost always near impossible because whover has - or believes they have - some bias advantage they would lose - or beleives they would lose - is inevitable to rationalize holding that edge and fight tooth and nail.

But anyway, if we WERE to change the systm it would be just plain dumb to scrap the electorial system and keep the proken plurality vote. We all know the 3rd party Nader/spoiler problem. If we're changing the system then we should obviously change it to the BEST available system. And that would be to institute a condorcet vote. That allows you to rank all the candidates by prefference. I could explain how condorcet inherently produces BETTER candidates and how that candidate is inherently centrist and best represents everyone across any split (city/country included), and how that candidate is liked by moderates on both sides, but I'll leave the explanation to this excellect site.

-

They won't bother to visit these states in order to get elected

As opposed to this election where they spent essentially all their time in three of the biggest states in the country and ignored everyone else.[/sarcasm]

With a popular election they would have had to address the entire country.

However I I don't think we should siply eliminate the electorial college. If you are going to do a constitutional ammendment to fix our horribly broken system then we need to really fix it. This site does not specifcally address the United States, it does provides an EXCELLECT explanation of how to make a far more acurate reprsentitive and democratic system. For example we need to replace our simplistic and severely broken plurality voting system with a condorcet style vote where you get to rank the candidates. Not only does that solve the problem with 3rd parties and the spoiler effect, but it would produce a FAR better president. With our current system we get president polarized to one side or the other, and that president gets imposed on the opposite side. Condorcet voting inherently drives the system to centrist candidates, ones who are acceptable to moderates on all sides. A true uniter. The reason is that a centrist candidate would get a ton of second place rankings by the radicals on both sides, enough to beat a one sided candidate who gets first place votes from his side and LAST place rankings from the opposite side.

Had Kerry won the electorial vote and lost the popular vote then perhaps BOTH sides would have been ready to overhaul our broken system. The democrats were outraged over the 2000 screwing, and the republicann would have been outraged at such a 2004 screwing. An opportunity for real reform.

-

Chuckle :)

This website gives and exxelent discussion of democratic systems, and specifically deals with voting systems. Condorcet voting really is the best known most accurate system for voting when you have more than two candidates. A ton of mathematical study has gone into voting systems. When you get to the right page on AccurateDemocracy.com they give exellent descriptions of the flaws of simmplistic majority votes (Nader-spoiler effect) and the ways in which InstantTunnof can give obviously wrong results.

-

If you are interested, there is a ton of amazing information at AccurateDemocracy.com

We were essentially the first modern democracy, so we have what amounts to a version 1.0 betatest system of democracy. We have an arachaic system and it's buggy as hell. In the last two hundred and twenty-odd years a LOT has been learned, learned from various democratic systems in other countries and from mathematical analysis and systems theory. With a full overhaul we could get a far more representitive and effecive government. Unfortuantly such a massive constitutional overhaul would not be easy to pull off.

If we simply eleiminated the electorial college we would be left with that is called plurality voting. In plurality voting you have the well known 3rd party problem with the spoiler effect - vote for Nader and wind up tossing the election to Bush's 48% minority. Condorcet fixes that. In condorcet voting you get to rank all the candidates in order of prefference. Usually final result is simple and obvious - match up the winner one at a time with each of the losers and you see the winner would have won all of the one-on-one races. One "problem" is that you can have a 3-way or more "tie" where candidate A would beat B and B would beat C and C would beat A, making a circle. It seems odd, but that sort of circle really can happen. In that in rare case you have to use a somewhat complex mathematical or computer-type algorithm to figure out how multi-candidate "ties" get broken. You need some messy math to see who had the "strongest" victory. It is the best avalilable system for multi-candidate races, but it is hard to explain that messy tie-break system to the public. That makes it a hard sell.

The way condorcet works out is that you end up electing a centrist candidate with the broadest support. No right-wing majorities or left-wing majorities imposing their lopsided and hated candidate on the other side. You get a candidate that appeals to both the left-moderates and right-moderates. To put it simplistically, the centrist candidate gets tons of second choice votes from the radicals on both sides. That lets him beat either of the polarized candidates who get split first and last place rankings. Everyone finds him tolerable.

-

oops, fixed links:
ElectionMethods.org and AccurateDemocracy.com.

I butched the link in my other post. Here's a corrected clickable link:

accuratedemocracy.com

-

As to the horror of having numerous parties: look at Israel.

Israel, and most other modern Democracies use proportional representaion systems. However there is a newer and even better varient called a Ensemble Councils. It is a proportional system plus a balancing centrist Condorcet group.

Condorcet voting is the system we SHOULD be using to elect the president and many other votes. It looks almost exactly the same as Instant Runoff voting, and in most cases produces the same result. However Condorcet fixes many cases where Instant Runoff can severely screw up.

The website AccurateDemocracy is a tour-de-force on the various failings of different democratic systems and on the best modern knowledge on building the most accurate, fair, rational, and efficent system of democratic representation. I doubt anyone would dispute that there are problems with our current system, problems well documented on that site. However many of those problems ARE solevable. Unfortunatly implementing all of it would require an overhaul of essentially our entire political system, an overhaul that would be rabidly opposed by both the Republican and Democratic leadership. Still, there are some measures that can be implemented without too much difficulty, individual states can easily adopt Condorcet voting.

-

As to the horror of having numerous parties: look at Israel.

Israel, and most other modern Democracies use proportional representaion systems. However there is a newer and even better varient called a Ensemble Councils. It is a proportional system plus a balancing centrist Condorcet group.

Condorcet voting is the system we SHOULD be using to elect the president and many other votes. It looks almost exactly the same as Instant Runoff voting, and in most cases produces the same result. However Condorcet fixes many cases where Instant Runoff can severely screw up.

The website AccurateDemocracy is a tour-de-force on the various failings of different democratic systems and on the best modern knowledge on building the most accurate, fair, rational, and efficent system of democratic representation. I doubt anyone would dispute that there are problems with our current system, problems well documented on that site. However many of those problems ARE solevable. Unfortunatly implementing all of it would require an overhaul of essentially our entire political system, an overhaul that would be rabidly opposed by both the Republican and Democratic leadership. Still, there are some measures that can be implemented without too much difficulty, individual states can easily adopt Condorcet voting.

-

Better systems for single-seat races are Approval or Condorcet (which you can find more about at ElectionMethods.org) and Proportional Representation would be great for Congress (our checks and balances work pretty well, so there's no need to move to a Parliamentary system). Another informative site (albeit somewhat confusing to navigate) is Accurate Democracy.

This is not something either party wants, so it will be a long, uphill battle. But neither party wanted campaign finance reform either, so enough popular support can get anything done (although 527s are bad, they're not as bad as soft money, and indeed, at least they help pull power away from the two big parties).