An Analysis of Various Election Methods

An anonymous reader writes "David Cobb talked about Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) as the best choice in electoral methods in his interview here, but is it really? The folks over at electionmethods.org seem to think it isn't. They favor Condorcet voting, which is another ranking style method using simulated one on one elections. Here is an evaluation of various methods, including IRV and Condorcet."

Comments

Must explain in one sentence or less

[siriuskase]

Much as we need a better system, it won't catch on if it can't be explained in one simple sentence.

Re:Must explain in one sentence or less

[UserGoogol]

The person who is would win a one-on-one vote against for every other candidate wins, if such a person exists.

Re:Must explain in one sentence or less

[TPIRman]

I agree, citizens won't tolerate any complications in their voting system. Especially Americans, who are just too accustomed to the straightforward, ultra-simple, intuitive U.S. electoral college to comprehend anything complex.

Re:Must explain in one sentence or less

[bgog]

Rank the candidates in your order of preference.

There is your sentance. Condorcet voting indicates that you vote a preference for each possible combination, however this can be simplified to just ranking them in order because it satisfies all of the possible combinations. For example:

Choose A over C
Choose B over A
Choose B over C
Choose B over D
Choose D over A
Choose D over C
Is exatly the same as saying:
1. B
2. D
3. A
4. C
But ranking is easier for people to understand.

Re:Must explain in one sentence or less

[NegativeOneUserID]

Much as we need a better system, it won't catch on if it can't be explained in one simple sentence.

I can do it in four....

1) Eenie meenie miney moe.
2) Catch a tiger by the toe.
3) If he squeals, let him go.
4) Eenie meenie miney moe.

Although I do feel this is the better system, you are probably right in saying the average american would find this confusing.

Re:Must explain in one sentence or less

[mikeophile]

Still though, this line really gives me the giggles.

The rules for determining the winner would be slightly more complicated than they are now, but they would be based on elementary mathematics and should be understandable by virtually anyone old enough to vote.

Oh how I wished I lived in this man's world.

Mechanism not listed

[blamanj]

One mechanism I've not seen discussed is one I'll call a "voter economy". It probably has a real name, but it's not on that site and it seems like a reasonable system to me.

In this system, you get a certain number of votes (say 5x the number of candidates) and you can "spend" those votes however you like. So if you really like candidate A, you spend all your votes on A. If you like A a little, hate B, and would prefer C, you can spend 75% of your votes on C, 25% on A, and none on be.

This, to me, seems much better than ranking systems, since you can specifiy how much you prefer one candidate over another. It should be easy to explain, since people are used to the idea of spending.

Mathematicians, tell me whether or not this is a workable system.

Re:Mechanism not listed

[shobadobs]

This is somewhat like the Borda voting method, except that in the Borda method, you must give N points to your favorite candidate, N - 1 points to your second favorite, and so on - the number of points is fixed.

The problem with your method is that everybody is going to throw their points at one candidate - their favorite. The problem with the Borda method is this scenario: Suppose you have high school band members voting on where they want the band trip to be. The options are Chicago, Toronto, and Myrtle Beach. The situation is this: 45 bandies want Toronto over Myrtle Beach, 45 prefer Myrtle Beach over Toronto, and 10 loonies prefer Chicago (which is such a bad idea, by the way). Each person lists their three choices in order - first place votes are worth 3 points, second place 2 points, third place 1 point.

All the Toronto-wanters decide that to screw the Myrtle Beach crowd, they'll vote for Myrtle Beach in third place, with Chicago in second, even though it is a crappy place for a band trip (because they shouldn't have to worry about Chicago getting picked). The Myrtle Beach-wanters do the same thing. The result is that 180 points go to each Myrtle Beach, Chicago, and Toronto.

Then the Chicago loonies vote for Chicago in first place, putting Chicago over the edge. Chicago wins, and 90% of people hate the band trip.

Re:Mechanism not listed

[MourningBlade]

A sibling post mentioned Borda, and he is correct, this maps to Borda.

Another issue with Borda-type systems is voting strategy.

If you run a scare campaign, you can convince people that it is vital your campaign succeed. Of course, your opponent will do likewise.

Of course, just about every presidential campaign in memory has been that way: vote for me OR ELSE.

So how does Borda deal with this? If it's vital that your opponent lose, you have to put the maximum vote on a candidate likely to defeat him. In your system, that would mean putting all 5x the available options onto one candidate. Any other option would reduce the strength of your vote.

So, Borda devolves into our current system.

You want to use a system that does not punish you for stating a preference. Condorcet does this. IRV does this better than the current system, but not as well as it could. Approval voting doesn't punish, either (though you could argue that it doesn't reward).

A large part of the issue with any voting system is you have to consider how it will be used. You will have some very intelligent people out there attempting to manipulate those votes.

In disclosure, I believe in doing either Condorcet or Approval voting, preference to Condorcet in the future, Approval today.

Approval voting and security (non-repudiability)

[Corpus_Callosum]

The biggest problem that I can see with systems such as approval voting is that it is not non-repudiable. In other words, it would be impossible to verify that election results were not changed. A recount would not be able to detect changes made after a voter made his/her marks.

With a one voter, one vote system, it is easy to count the number of voters and the number of votes and ensure that the results were not modified.

I believe that this is a pretty important characteristic and I am a bit skeptical about who is pushing approval voting.

No perfect system

[harlows_monkeys]

Voting systems are one of those things people will ALWAYS disagree on, because the set of "reasonable" desirable properties that most people would like in a system are contradictory, as shown by Kenneth Arrow.

Re:No perfect system

[Anonymous Coward]

I totally agree.

Anybody who advocates one system as more platonically better needs to read Arrow, but anyways, in my analysis, I prefer IRV/STV voting over Condercet voting, especially in multi-seat elections. Why? If all seats were chosen by condercet voting, all seats would be the kinda middle of approval. It doesn't provide for proportional representation, _at all_.

The multi-seat form of IRV, called Choice Voting (generally called Single-Transferable Voting (STV)), is preferable to Condercet if you aren't doing a straight party vote for bringing forth a diversity of representation. STV allows any minority group that can reach the election threshold (VotesTotal / (NumSeats + 1)) at least one seat of representation.

Further, in a representative system where there are multiple seats and they are all elected singularly, IRV would be preferable for the same reason (more likely to provide minority representation to increase the dialectic, because it heavily penalizes the person who can't get first place votes (if you got second place votes on all ballots, you may not win), giving third parties much more representation. In a single seat non-aggregate position (such as the Presidency), Condercet voting would probably be the best system.

However, we should all look back to Arrow's Theorem and remember that all voting systems are merely ways to reduce the input from direct democracy to a "managable" level for the elites, and thus they are flawed because OF COURSE they are losing data by "downsampling". Thus, if you want to really be heard, be active, get out, vote, be involved, write letters, run for office yourself and work to integrate real democracy, not just temporary dictatorships.

Take your pick

[gladed]

Electoral College vs IRV vs Condorcet vs ... but how will we decide which system to use, since a majority vote obviously isn't good enough? Do we draw straws?

Actually the only thing I can't decide on is, which is the sillier idea:

1. Joe Voter will correctly navigate a ranking system, when he can't even push the whole chad out of the correct row.
2. Joe Voter has even the foggiest notion what's best for the country.

Simulation Of Voting Models for Close Election

[Isomorph]

Another interesting thing to read is this essay by Brian Olson.

He has made a simulation that is open source.

So hack away. Look here and here.

Re:Why not keep our current one?

[siriuskase]

Actually, it is the US with the obsolete voting system. Check out most of Europe, Australia, just about anywhere that has a newer democracy than the US. That's where you find such inovations as party list for legislatures and ranking systems or approval for presidents.

Re:The Two Party System

[evilviper]

The two major parties haven't "stacked" anything. The current voting system was around from the beginning of the country, before either party existed.

Live Condorcet Presidential Poll

[Baldrson]

There is a live Condorcet Presidential Poll. Source code is available too.

a clarification

[RussP]

As the webmaster of ElectionMethods.org, I am thrilled to see this link on slashdot. Please tell your friends and relatives too!

I would just like to clarify a couple of points. We believe that Condorcet voting is the best system if properly implemented. However, as you will see at our site, the proper implementation gets very technical. Therefore, we realized a long time ago that Condorcet is simply not practical for actual implemention on a large scale in the forseeable future. It's just too darn complicated.

However, Approval Voting is very simple. It's the same as our current plurality system except that the voter is allowed to vote for more than one candidate (no ranking). When people first hear about Approval Voting (myself included), they think it is defective because it does not allow you to rank the candidates (as in IRV and Condorcet). But this is misleading. IRV lets you rank the candidates, but it does not properly count your preferences. Technical analysis shows that Approval Voting is a surprisingly good system given its extreme simplicity. And it requires no new voting equipment. It could be implemented very quickly once a consensus is reached to do so, and the only objection I can see is to protect the two-party duopoly.

Think about it, folks. We could revolutionize our political system by simply letting voters vote for more than one candidate. This will have a far more profound effect than term limits or campaign finance reform, for example.

What effect it will have cannot be predicted exactly, of course. Perhaps the Republicrats will still remain dominant for a long time, perhaps not. But it's definitely worth a try, perhaps starting at the local level.

Oh, one more caveat. You must realize that *no* alternative voting system can make the US Presidential election fairer for minor parties as long as the Electoral College is in place. Trust me: it just can't be done. That's why I'm for aboloshing the EC. Unfortunately, many of my fellow conservatives are dead set against that, and it requires a Constitutional Amendment.

Re:The Two Party System

[MourningBlade]

One way the two parties have "stacked" things is through the use of the so-called Australian ballot, which is pre-printed. This brings to rise the need to have an approved list of candidates, with write-in options.

Numerous states have horrible ballot access laws, mine in particular (Oklahoma).

I'm not sure there's really a better option out there at the moment, but concentrating the power to decide who will or will not be on a ballot leads to corruption.

Tough shit for rural voters...

[Goonie]

This self-serving rubbish gets thrown up by rural voters, and the mostly conservative politicians who rely on their disproportionate electoral influence, all the friggin' time. Your contention that those sheep living New York, LA, and Chicago are more susceptible to charismatic bullshit-spinners than the good citizens of Bum's Rush, Alabama simply isn't supported by any evidence.

In my experience, the only thing that electoral bias in favour of rural voters does is to artificially inflate farmers property values by turning them into into welfare recipients (in all but name), while indulging their worst tendancies to blame people who aren't WASPs for the world's problems and tell everybody else what they can and can't do in their own bedrooms.

The subsidy for American farmers works out to about $20,000 per rural job - yep, those salt of the earth folks you love so much have a huge proportion of their income paid by those city pagans. That's what the electoral college, and 2 senators per state regardless of population, does.

Re:Rebuttal to Arrow

[robla]

I, for one, don't really advocate Condorcet for multi-seat elections. However, for single seat elections (what it was designed for), "proportional representation" is moot.

If I could wave a magic wand, I'd make the President of the U.S. elected via Condorcet, Senators also elected per state via Condorcet, and the House of Representatives elected proportionally. For the House, I'd use Single Transferable Vote (STV) and it wouldn't be one big nationwide proportional pool, but rather, multimember districts of 5-9 seats.

Rob
(who's lying...if he could wave a magic wand, there's a lot of other things that would be too much more fun to do than change the electoral system)

Re:Arrow's Impossibility Theorem

[tunesmith]

Arrow's theorem and its relevance to these voting systems is a much more complicated matter than it seems at first. For instance, one of Arrow's "reasonable requirements" is the Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives Criterian (IIAC), and it's been shown in many scenarios that failing the IIAC is actually what you want.

Condorcet fails Arrow's Theorem as do all other methods, but only when there isn't a Condorcet Winner. When there is, Condorcet is perfect. When there isn't a Condorcet Winner (like when there's a defeat loop, A over B, B over C, and C over A), then there are plenty of tiebreaker methods people can use that are "almost perfect". But in large elections, it's actually pretty rare that there isn't a Condorcet Winner.

So the Arrow argument isn't the smackdown that people take it to be.

Check out the facts first

[slashing1]

There is no question that American agricultural subsidies and protectionism are completely screwed up and hurting both American consumers and the international market for agricultural products. For someone to blame this on our electoral college and our senator election method, however, is hard to fathom. Take a look at the other major wealthy, developed nations-- Europe and Japan have even worse policies regarding agricultural supports and tariffs. The question is, why is this?

During the time period of the Great Depression, many economies around the world were suffering greatly, and the agricultural sector in particular was hurt globally. Countries responded by passing extremely harsh anti-trade legislation to try to protect their own economies through "screw-your-neighbor" terms of trade. After WWII, politicians wised up and starting relaxing these trade barriers, but many countries were afraid to expose their agricultural sector to greater risks. Effectively, farmers had suffered enough, and they hadn't gotten a big jumpstart from the industrial war effort. As such, trade liberalization occurred primarily in the manufacturing sector.

All the crap you see today with agriculture is a legacy of that ultraprotectionist era, and developing countries still pay the price today. There is some hope with the latest Doha round of trade talks, but don't expect any major changes soon.