New Sightline article by Kristin Eberhard
This is a new post by Kristin Eberhard.
I'll respond to some of it here.
> Political scientists and mathematicians have come up with many criteria by which to evaluate voting systems, resulting in complex tables like this one. But as Nobel prize winner Kenneth Arrow proved, no system can satisfy all criteria.
This is false. Arrow's Theorem says nothing about satisfying "all" criteria; it specifically refers to three specific criteria. And Arrow's Theorem only applies to ordinal (ranked) voting methods, so cardinal (rated) systems such as Score Voting and Approval Voting do in fact satisfy his criteria.
http://scorevoting.net/ArrowThm.html
> The Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance has a tool that translates criteria into priorities and selects the best voting systems for you based on your stated priorities.
This general way of thinking is fallacious. It's kind of like evaluating race cars by stating how much you value horsepower vs. drag vs. weight. What you care about is: How fast will this car complete a race? What voters really care about is: How satisfied will I be with the elected office holders with this system? It turns out we have an objective way to measure that, called Bayesian Regret. Thankfully this is briefly mentioned by the Wikipedia article Kristin linked to, but it is astonishing that she didn't mention it directly in a discussion about how to assess the quality of various systems.
Now that's not to say that "externalities" like cost or political viability (which aren't captured by Bayesian Regret) are irrelevant. But this kind of analysis needs to be grounded in science first and foremost. The same would be true of a complex topic like climate change. You start by understanding the science and the ideal policy, and then you incorporate practical considerations. If you don't get the ideal right, then the practical considerations are of much less importance. Who cares about the political viability of the wrong policy?
> Under Instant Runoff Voting, it is always safe to rank a weak third-party candidate like Nader.
This is simply false. Even a weak candidate can change the order of elimination, leading to a major change in the final outcome. E.g.
33% LePen > Macron
32% Macron > X
35% X > Macron
Macron is preferred to LePen by a huge 67% majority here, and preferred to X by a huge 65% majority. But thanks to vote splitting, Macron is the first eliminated.
LePen is the Condorcet loser—the weakest candidate. But if some LePen supporters insincerely rank Macron in first place, then he wins—which helps them get their 2nd choice instead of their 3rd.
And the bigger issue here is that you do not know ahead of time exactly what's going to happen. This is why Green supporters often vote Democrat under the present system, even if the Democrat ends up with a margin of victory that would have made it safe to vote sincerely. They did not know exactly what would happen. They just knew that a vote for Green was more likely to be a spoiler than to help them.
> For example, if you ranked Terry Tea Party first, Larry Libertarian second, and Ronald Republican third, your vote would count for the Tea Party candidate in the first round; if she was eliminated, your vote would transfer to the Libertarian;
Not if the Libertarian was eliminated before the Tea Party.
> In extremely rare cases—0.7 percent of Instant Runoff Elections in US cities—IRV creates a “center squeeze” situation
It doesn't matter that it's rare. You're failing to understand basic statistics here. It's also rare for a third party candidate to be a spoiler in our present system. But people vote strategically because of the relative probability of "Green is a spoiler" vs. "Green wins".
This is explained in great detail by a math PhD here if these relative probabilities aren't clear and obvious enough to you.
http://scorevoting.net/TarrIrv.html
> All of these systems suffer from a flaw voting experts call “Later-No-Harm”
Okay, this statement makes it clear Kristin is not acting as an objective researcher but more of a pro-IRV salesperson. Because there's a strong case that it's a flaw to satisfy Later-no-harm.
http://scorevoting.net/LNH.html
> When voters realize this, they often “bullet vote” (only score or vote for their favorite candidate among the perceived frontrunners).
"Among the perceived frontrunners"?! Are you telling me that a Green who votes Democrat and Green is "bullet voting" because the Green isn't one of the perceived frontrunners? Are you now suddenly redefining the term "bullet voting"?
In any case, this whole bullet voting argument is specious and deceptive based on empirical data.
http://scorevoting.net/BulletBugaboo.html
> Experience suggests that most voters using Approval and Score give their favorite candidate the maximum score or rank and all other candidates a minimal score or no vote.
That is an outright lie, as the previous link showed. Also...
http://scorevoting.net/Honesty.html
http://scorevoting.net/HonStrat.html
Great counterexample from a high stakes election. (A poll, but a heavily contested one.)
http://scorevoting.net/RLCstrawPoll2015.html
> Score Runoff Voting should, in theory, encourage voters to give a maximum score to their favorite and also a score to their second-favorite
Only your first and your second? This is simply false. You want to top-rate your favorite frontrunner, even if she's your 3rd, or 4th, or 5th (etc.) overall favorite. The runoff component of SRV makes this even more so, since distinguishing between the candidates is how you have influence in the second round.
> Different people have different ideas about who the “most right” winner is. The candidate whom a majority of voters support? The candidate whom most voters would choose over any other individual candidate in a head-to-head race? The candidate the fewest voters strongly object to (even if that also means that fewer voters strongly support him)? The candidate whom voters most strongly adore, even if many voters object?
This implies it's subjective, when in fact you can apply logic to this question and get an objectively correct answer.
http://scorevoting.net/UtilFoundns.html
> Score Voting would likely lead to even more negative campaigns than Plurality Voting.
Wow. Just, wow.
As far as I'm concerned, this goes beyond legitimate disagreement. This is outright anti-scientific Rovian FUD.
Aaron Wolf Thu 11 May 2017 3:41AM
I hope this comes across well given that I focused all my efforts on helping positive communication in posting earlier…
I stand by my points that Clay didn't follow Rapoport's Rules in his initial complaints and that the style was liable to be taken in a way that wouldn't lead to optimal results and ideal communication about the issues… BUT…
I agree completely with Clay's post just now clarifying things.
But it's sorta like this:
- Clay brings up real objections but laced with somewhat personal criticisms and assertions of bad faith on Kristen's part
- Kristen responds defensively including wording that seems to dismiss Clay's concerns and suggest that solidarity means skipping internal criticism
- Clay replies emphasizing the fact that having a known view doesn't mean the view is wrong in any way and that criticism and clarification internal to a movement is essential and necessary rather than problematic.
In all this, there's still some talking-past-one-another. I'd love to see people rise beyond the rhetoric so far and try to figure out what the real disagreements are. I hope Kristen can engage constructively in checking that she truly understands Clay's concerns and Clay can work to express them using Rapoport's Rules or otherwise at least assuming good faith as far as he can.
Let's take Kristen's "tearing down" point and assume she means attacking the integrity and sincerity of others, i.e. assuming bad faith, including any ad hominem etc. So she may be completely open to criticism that remains on point and isn't made personal. Let's give the benefit of the doubt and try that and give her the chance to respond appropriately.
To do that, it will probably require either that Clay reword all his concerns and ask Kristen to respond freshly to that rewording or for Kristen to work at ignoring the personal stuff and refocus on the specific concerns (as long as she feels she can trust Clay to engage further in a respectful enough way).
Aaron Wolf Thu 11 May 2017 3:50AM
A short version of what I just posted:
Someone's understanding of the truth is independent of whether they discuss it respectfully and clearly. If we care about success of the group's mission, we need to both insist on and practice healthy communication and yet never let miscommunication reduce our desire for understanding.
If a truly problematic jerk comes by here and says, in a toxic fashion, something completely true and important, I would hope that we speak up about the communication without ever using that concern to avoid learning the true point. A bad messenger can still have an important message. We need to work both on being good messengers and on hearing the important parts of messages even when they aren't expressed optimally.
Now, I'm done doing meta comments on this. Please do continue to discuss the issues at hand. The summaries by Kristen do contain misinformation and misrepresentation alongside what I see as a sincere attempt to summarize all the issues and views.
Sara Wolf Thu 11 May 2017 11:00AM
These are super complex topics and getting every single point spot on without some expert consultation and feedback or editing is next to impossible. I've so far submitted stuff I've written here or sent it to specific people to look over who are more solid on the technical stuff than I am. It's helped a lot. I still find things that I want to change and improve each time I re-read my articles or speeches.
Maybe something constructive here would be to create a network of us that are available to read and proof each-others work before publication. There are a number of things that are debatable and matters of opinion, but this is a science and we would all benefit from more editing before publication so we can focus more on peer review and teamwork after.
Also, this is the internet age. This article wasn't carved into stone. I wonder if Kristin would be open to some editing on the more false or misleading statements in the article?
Clay Shentrup Thu 11 May 2017 6:46PM
Okay, let me apologize to Kristin for seeing bad intentions and/or carelessness. I'll read Rapoport's Rules.
I do believe that the great majority of Kristin's objections are simple fallacies that I've encountered more times than I can count since the first months I got into election reform. Similar to how she must feel when she encounters climate myths like the "long tailpipe theory" or "Roman warm period" argument.
For example, the Later-no-harm argument feels superficially valid. It intuitively makes perfect sense. But the moment you go deeper into the game theory in a host of realistic situations, it's clear that it just doesn't hold water. When I encounter this argument with complete newcomers to the field, I have a lot of empathy. Because that was me when I first got into voting theory. But Kristin claims she's spent time researching the issue, and even said she read Gaming the Vote. So this tries my patience a bit. I will endeavor to be more patient.
Kristin Eberhard Fri 12 May 2017 8:57PM
Thanks Aaron for encouraging productive dialogue. I appreciate you trying to enforce good conduct here, but note that outside Loomio, Clay is tweeting at my work colleagues that I am posting lies on Sightline's site, which affects how much I want to engage here.
I'm happy to correct errors in the article, and as I said in response to Clay's comments, I've already made some adjustments to the language.
But I want to note three things: first, the structure of the Glossary is "Critics Say," "Supporters Say," "More information about supporters' and critics' claims" and "Experience." The first two sections explain advocates' claims about the systems, without judgment of how true they are. For example, I said that IRV supporters say it eliminates the spoiler effect because that is what they say. So if something in those sections does not accurately describe what Critics or Supporters say please let me know. If something in the "More information" and "Experience" sections doesn't accurately describe experts' views or real-world experience, please let me know.
Second, feedback is constructive if you tell me, for example: "you said 'the best strategy is...' but it would be accurate to say 'one strategy is...' because ... " Saying, as Clay did, "this whole way of thinking is fallacious" is not constructive feedback, it is dismissal.
Third, I want the articles to be as accurate as possible, but I also have to allocate my time well. I have had voting experts review the article and engaging with their feedback was time well spent and improved the article's accuracy. They gave me feedback like the above example.
So far, my time engaging with Clay's feedback has not been well spent. For example, the article describes how voting for a "weak third party candidate like Nader" (Nader got <3% of the vote), and describes that the dynamic is different in a race like Burlington with three strong candidates (the Republican won 33% of the vote). Clay says the statement about Nader is "false" because of... example with a candidate who wins 33% of the vote, which I specifically distinguished in the article. When I point this out, he doubles down that the 33% candidate is "weak" because she would lose/ is the Condorcet loser. Well, yes, so was the Republican in Vermont. That's the definition of the potential problem with IRV and other runoff systems: the Condorcet Loser might be strong enough to make it to the runoff instead of the Condorcet Winner. The article distinguished the three strong candidate scenario from the weak third-party Nader spoiler scenario. Engaging with Clay here didn't help me improve the article.
Other example: Clay says it is "egregious" that the article says bullet voting is a strategy in Score. The article links to a wikipedia article that says strategic voting in Score is the same as Approval, which links to an article that says strategic voting in Approval is Bullet or Compromise. So... strategic score=strategic approval=bullet or compromise. Bullet voting is a strategy in score. How is that an egregious error? Maybe Clay meant to say (but didn't say) that it was wrong to say it was the "best" strategy? So I changed "best" to "one strategy," though I feel some ambivalence about how much that change improved accuracy, because this is under the "Critics say" section, and critics definitely say that Score voting will devolve to bullet voting. Lots of time spent; possibly a slight improvement to the article (or maybe not).
Final example: Clay says the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance's whole way of thinking about electoral methods is "fallacious." Look, if it is wrong for me to look to the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance for information about electoral methods, well ... let's just say this comment didn't help me improve the article.
Anyway, I'm here in Oregon and want to see reform in Oregon, so I want to engage here (on Loomio) with activists who want to push for local reform. If I've made errors, I want to correct them. If Clay or others have constructive feedback, I want to take it into account. And maybe over beers is a good place to discuss philosophical differences of utilitarianism vs majoritarianism. But I can't spend time on Loomio arguing about differences of opinion that don't improve my articles.
Aaron Wolf Sat 13 May 2017 11:28PM
Kristin, thanks for the notes
Clay is tweeting …
Part of the same toxic but common pattern of things, if he assumes bad faith from you, etc. vicious cycle. I'm sure both of you mean better than this, and either has the capacity to take the steps to break the cycle, as long as you recognize the pattern as the likely source of the problem and give each other benefit-of-the-doubt re: assuming good faith really.
the structure of the Glossary is "Critics Say," "Supporters Say," "More information about supporters' and critics' claims"
That sounds like the mythical "view from nowhere". Wikipedia has a NPOV neutral point of view but ideally does better than view-from-nowhere. It's fair to write things that acknowledge others' perspectives and tries not to be partisan. But we all need to take a stand for truth where we don't give credence to anything plainly wrong. When Trump says something that is just plainly false, it's not okay to simply report that "Trump says X" and "critics say Y". At some point you need to either ignore false statements or say "Trump says X, but that's false".
The responsibility of reporting includes some amount of checking the details and reporting the truth of anything that really can be concluded. But more important is the fact that presenting everything as though there are two equal sides is often unreasonable. There aren't two equal sides to global warming, for example. Any "side" that rejects the basic facts of the science doesn't deserve to be described as a potentially legitimate view.
So, just be careful not to hide behind some pretense of objective view-from-nowhere.
So far, my time engaging with Clay's feedback has not been well spent.
I hope (and see evidence already) that Clay takes this feedback well and switches to making sure to provide strictly constructive criticism. Many of us have been guilty of not always being constructive, so pushing back and then being open to the constructive criticism is about the most valuable thing to do here in building the health of the reform community overall. I hope you two will take these lessons and live up to them.
"Critics say" section, and critics definitely say that Score voting will devolve to bullet voting
This is one area where it's probably important to weigh in on the strength of the evidence. Critics do make this claim, but they make it based on several assumptions and hypotheses. It would be fairer to word it as "worry about the potential for score to devolve to bullet voting" because there's really no compelling evidence for any claim that it will do this.
I hope everyone involved will help with constructive pushback on the style of discourse here, as we all need practice continually. Feel free to ignore a comment's substance and ask for it to be EDITED to fix the respectful, constructive style, and THEN do address the substance when that's done. Don't use style to dismiss the substance forever.
Clay Shentrup Tue 16 May 2017 4:13PM
How is that an egregious error?
Kristin,
I feel I've responded thoroughly to that question. I would appreciate some acknowledgement. Especially given this statement.
The best strategy is to give a maximum score to your favorite and minimum to everyone else, making Score Voting act like Plurality Voting
I regard this as being roughly on par with a claim like, "IRV incentivizes voters to rank the candidates in reverse order." It's just highly inaccurate and easily disproved.
Kristin Eberhard Fri 12 May 2017 9:12PM
@clayshentrup - if you send me your email address, I would appreciate your review of my description of RRV for my next article, so I can improve it before publishing. Thanks!
Clay Shentrup Sat 13 May 2017 1:16AM
[email protected] :heart:
Aaron Wolf · Thu 11 May 2017 12:18AM
Having read over the original article and Clay's points, let me please reiterate the importance of Rapoport's Rules:
Clay wrote a lot of things that violate the rules, assume bad faith from Kristen, and aren't likely to be taken well in leading to the best understanding in the end. That doesn't mean any of his points are otherwise technically less valid.
Kristen both here and in the article itself would do better to follow the first rule. In order to honestly avoid Clay's criticism (even if the conclusion is not in agreement), the descriptions of score and score runoff must live up to a situation where Clay would say "I don't agree with your judgments, but it's clear you understand my concerns/points." As is, Clay is left with the impression that Kristen either does not understand why he disagrees with her judgments or that she is being intentionally dishonest in order to promote a particular preconceived partisan position.
I don't think it would be fair for anyone to actually conclude that either party is right or wrong here or what. I think the conclusion is solid that both of you (and everyone else) need to review Rapoport's Rules and figure out how to do better in those regards (which is not a suggestion that no effort is made, I'm trying to be fair and I'm sure that if I put more thought into this very post it too could be better).