[EM] Proportional multi-winner ranked voting methods

Discussion:

[EM] Proportional multi-winner ranked voting methods - guidelines?

Armando

2017-02-21 07:57:51 UTC

Hello,
I am a new subscriber, and I am not an expert.

I am looking for multi-winner election with fair proportional representation.
I would like to find a method allowing voters to vote âtransversallyâ through parties: it could decrease conflicts.
I would very appreciate if you can help me giving âguidelinesâ, explaining pros and cons, advising further readings. I thank you very much in advance.

I would like to open two issue:

1. Best multi-winner ranked method for a PROPORTIONAL ASSEMBLY

I read of CIVS <http://civs.cs.cornell.edu/proportional.html> and Schulze-STV <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_STV>, and I thought they where the best for my case.
They seems better then âtraditionalâ STV since they satisfy more criteria, with less strategic vote risk.
However I donât understand differences among various condorcetâs multi-winner systems.

I knew also De Borda-based multiwinner systems: http://www.deborda.org/faq/ <http://www.deborda.org/faq/>
It seems De Borda got popular in the spanish party of Podemos recently: but they used a non-proportional De Borda to elect their national assembly (with DesBorda <https://vistalegre2.podemos.info/la-asamblea/#Sistema_de_votacion> by Echenique).
Others in the same party proposed (failing) the Dowdall variant <https://forms.podemos.info/wp-content/uploads/gravity_forms/247-6edda8669dd26a992ea894158e3e3d91/2016/12/PropuestaPodemosEnMovimiento.pdf> of De Borda (it is used in Nauruâs elections too). It seems it would have been more proportional (here a simulation <http://www.eldiario.es/politica/datos-cocina-votaciones-Podemos_0_612089572.html?utm_content=buffer93f9f&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer>, 3rd figure, compare Sistema utilizado (DesBorda) with Propuesta de Anticapitalista (Dowdall-Borda)).

However De Borda Institute recommends Quota Borda System http://www.deborda.org/faq/voting-systems/what-is-the-quota-borda-system-qbs.html <http://www.deborda.org/faq/voting-systems/what-is-the-quota-borda-system-qbs.html>

Actually I think there are few differences, for voters, between a condorcet and a borda ballot (always numbering candidates). Is it?
But what are the difference in results, considering the proportional variants?

Do you think PR-open list system helps more the more âconflictualâ candidates (as could be the leader of each party, since they are overexposed to party electors âloveâ and to opposers âhateâ)?

2. Best multi-winner ranked method for a PROPORTIONAL MIXED-PARTIES GOVERNMENT
I was fascinated by De Borda Instituteâs idea: a system to elect directly a mixed government, where voters choose candidates AND best offices for them.
They call it Matrix Vote http://www.deborda.org/faq/voting-systems/what-is-the-matrix-vote.html <http://www.deborda.org/faq/voting-systems/what-is-the-matrix-vote.html>

Could be possible to reach this purpose also with other systems, for example Schulze-stv?

Best regards,
Thank you in advance

Armando Pitocco

VoteFair

2017-02-22 00:24:54 UTC

Permalink

Post by Armando
...
I am looking for multi-winner election with fair proportional
representation.
...
I would very appreciate if you can help me giving “guidelines”,
explaining pros and cons, advising further readings. ...

I suggest that you look at VoteFair ranking, which is a method I
developed years ago, over a span of about a decade.

It is described in detail in my book "Ending The Hidden Unfairness In
U.S. Elections," which is available through multiple e-book reading
platforms. The book includes lots of illustrations to make the concepts
easier for "average" (non-math) readers to understand. (With so many
illustrations the file size is large and the low price basically just
covers the download fee.)

Near the end of the book I explain that the same system would work in
other nations simply by increasing the number of parliament members who
are elected using cross-district voting methods.

Based on your questions, here is what I think is the most important
concept for you to understand:

STV (the Single Transferable Vote) and similar methods(!) are designed
for a small number of available seats, and it is a mistake to think that
such a method can simply be used repeatedly to achieve fair results for
a large number of available parliament seats.

You seem to correctly understand that ranking candidates -- rather than
using single-mark ballots -- is essential for fair results. PR
(proportional representation) methods in Europe did not get this part of
PR correct. That's why it is easy for campaign contributions (money) to
easily control European politics.

With these concepts in mind, I suggest that you read the overview of
VoteFair ranking, which is here:

http://www.votefair.org/calculation_details.html

Or, for your convenience, here is a copy of those words, but without the
links:

........ begin quote ..........

VoteFair ranking is a calculation method that includes the following
components:

* VoteFair popularity ranking, which identifies the most popular choice,
the second-most popular choice, the third-most popular choice, and so on
down to the least popular choice. Here is a link to details about
VoteFair popularity ranking.

* VoteFair representation ranking, which identifies the
most-representative choice (which is the same as the most popular choice
according to VoteFair popularity ranking), the second-most
representative choice, and additional representation levels. The
second-most representative choice is identified after appropriately
reducing the influence of the voters who are well represented by the
most-popular (and most-representative) choice. Without this adjustment
the same voters who are well-represented by the most popular choice
could also determine the second-place winner. Here is a link to details
about VoteFair representation ranking.

* VoteFair party ranking, which identifies the most-popular political
party (which is the same as the most popular choice according to
VoteFair popularity ranking), the second-most popular political party
(which is the same as the second-most representative choice), and the
political party that deserves to be recognized as the third-most popular
political party. The third-most popular party is identified after
appropriately reducing the influence of the voters who are well
represented by the first-ranked and second-ranked political parties.
Without this adjustment the same voters who are well-represented by one
of the most popular parties could create a "shadow" party that occupies
the third position, which would block smaller parties from that third
position. Here is a link to details about VoteFair party ranking.

* VoteFair partial-proportional ranking, which identifies candidates who
failed to win a legislative seat in their district, yet deserve to win
special legislative seats for the purpose of compensating for unfair
district boundaries, making it possible to elect legislators from
"third" political parties (especially when the main political parties
fail to fully represent their political priorities. Without this
adjustment the balance of power among political parties in the
legislature can easily fail to match the voters' preferences for
political parties. Here is a link to details about VoteFair
partial-proportional ranking.

........ end quote ..........

For details about any part of VoteFair ranking, please go to the webpage
and click the appropriate link.

Thanks for your interest in learning how voting should be done!

If you have questions, just ask.

Richard Fobes
Author of "The Creative Problem Solver's Toolbox" which has been
published around the world in 10 languages

Post by Armando
Hello,
I am a new subscriber, and I am not an expert.
I am looking for multi-winner election with fair proportional
representation.
I would like to find a method allowing voters to vote “transversally”
through parties: it could decrease conflicts.
I would very appreciate if you can help me giving “guidelines”,
explaining pros and cons, advising further readings. I thank you very
much in advance.
*1. Best multi-winner ranked method for a PROPORTIONAL ASSEMBLY*
I read of CIVS
<http://civs.cs.cornell.edu/proportional.html> and Schulze-STV
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_STV>, and I thought they where
the best for my case.
They seems better then “traditional” STV since they satisfy more
criteria, with less strategic vote risk.
However I don’t understand differences among various condorcet’s
multi-winner systems.
_http://www.deborda.org/faq/_
but they used a non-proportional De Borda to elect their national
assembly (with DesBorda
<https://vistalegre2.podemos.info/la-asamblea/#Sistema_de_votacion> by
Echenique).
Others in the same party proposed (failing) the Dowdall variant
<https://forms.podemos.info/wp-content/uploads/gravity_forms/247-6edda8669dd26a992ea894158e3e3d91/2016/12/PropuestaPodemosEnMovimiento.pdf>
of De Borda (it is used in Nauru’s elections too). It seems it would
have been more proportional (here a simulation
<http://www.eldiario.es/politica/datos-cocina-votaciones-Podemos_0_612089572.html?utm_content=buffer93f9f&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer>,
3rd figure, compare /Sistema utilizado (/DesBorda) with /Propuesta de
Anticapitalista/ (Dowdall-Borda)).
However De Borda Institute recommends Quota Borda
System http://www.deborda.org/faq/voting-systems/what-is-the-quota-borda-system-qbs.html
Actually I think there are few differences, for voters, between a
condorcet and a borda ballot (always numbering candidates). Is it?
But what are the difference in /results, /considering the proportional
variants?
Do you think PR-open list system helps more the more “conflictual”
candidates (as could be the leader of each party, since they are
overexposed to party electors “love” and to opposers “hate”)?
*2*. *Best multi-winner ranked method for a PROPORTIONAL MIXED-PARTIES
GOVERNMENT*
I was fascinated by De Borda Institute’s idea: a system to elect
directly a mixed government, where voters choose candidates AND best
offices for them.
They call it Matrix
Vote http://www.deborda.org/faq/voting-systems/what-is-the-matrix-vote.html
Could be possible to reach this purpose also with other systems, for example Schulze-stv?
Best regards,
Thank you in advance
Armando Pitocco
----
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info

----
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info

Richard Lung

2017-02-22 23:45:58 UTC

Permalink

Don't understand your remark about STV, the name given by Thomas Hare,
who invented it for a single national constituency. (Tho Mill was
prepared to be flexible about this, when he moved "Mr Hare's system" of
Personal Representation in parliament.
The HG Wells formula is "Proportional representation by the single
transferable vote in large constituencies."

Agree with you about preference voting essential for fairness. Do you
have any good source for your assertion that the lack of it in European
party-proportional methods makes them especially vulnerable to moneied
influence?
You could say the same, for instance about the nuclear lobby in Britain
(tho not Scotland).

from Richard Lung.

Post by VoteFair

Post by Armando
...
I am looking for multi-winner election with fair proportional representation.
...
I would very appreciate if you can help me giving “guidelines”,
explaining pros and cons, advising further readings. ...

I suggest that you look at VoteFair ranking, which is a method I
developed years ago, over a span of about a decade.
It is described in detail in my book "Ending The Hidden Unfairness In
U.S. Elections," which is available through multiple e-book reading
platforms. The book includes lots of illustrations to make the
concepts easier for "average" (non-math) readers to understand. (With
so many illustrations the file size is large and the low price
basically just covers the download fee.)
Near the end of the book I explain that the same system would work in
other nations simply by increasing the number of parliament members
who are elected using cross-district voting methods.
Based on your questions, here is what I think is the most important
STV (the Single Transferable Vote) and similar methods(!) are designed
for a small number of available seats, and it is a mistake to think
that such a method can simply be used repeatedly to achieve fair
results for a large number of available parliament seats.
You seem to correctly understand that ranking candidates -- rather
than using single-mark ballots -- is essential for fair results. PR
(proportional representation) methods in Europe did not get this part
of PR correct. That's why it is easy for campaign contributions
(money) to easily control European politics.
With these concepts in mind, I suggest that you read the overview of
http://www.votefair.org/calculation_details.html
Or, for your convenience, here is a copy of those words, but without
........ begin quote ..........
VoteFair ranking is a calculation method that includes the following
* VoteFair popularity ranking, which identifies the most popular
choice, the second-most popular choice, the third-most popular choice,
and so on down to the least popular choice. Here is a link to details
about VoteFair popularity ranking.
* VoteFair representation ranking, which identifies the
most-representative choice (which is the same as the most popular
choice according to VoteFair popularity ranking), the second-most
representative choice, and additional representation levels. The
second-most representative choice is identified after appropriately
reducing the influence of the voters who are well represented by the
most-popular (and most-representative) choice. Without this
adjustment the same voters who are well-represented by the most
popular choice could also determine the second-place winner. Here is
a link to details about VoteFair representation ranking.
* VoteFair party ranking, which identifies the most-popular political
party (which is the same as the most popular choice according to
VoteFair popularity ranking), the second-most popular political party
(which is the same as the second-most representative choice), and the
political party that deserves to be recognized as the third-most
popular political party. The third-most popular party is identified
after appropriately reducing the influence of the voters who are well
represented by the first-ranked and second-ranked political parties.
Without this adjustment the same voters who are well-represented by
one of the most popular parties could create a "shadow" party that
occupies the third position, which would block smaller parties from
that third position. Here is a link to details about VoteFair party
ranking.
* VoteFair partial-proportional ranking, which identifies candidates
who failed to win a legislative seat in their district, yet deserve to
win special legislative seats for the purpose of compensating for
unfair district boundaries, making it possible to elect legislators
from "third" political parties (especially when the main political
parties fail to fully represent their political priorities. Without
this adjustment the balance of power among political parties in the
legislature can easily fail to match the voters' preferences for
political parties. Here is a link to details about VoteFair
partial-proportional ranking.
........ end quote ..........
For details about any part of VoteFair ranking, please go to the
webpage and click the appropriate link.
Thanks for your interest in learning how voting should be done!
If you have questions, just ask.
Richard Fobes
Author of "The Creative Problem Solver's Toolbox" which has been
published around the world in 10 languages

Post by Armando
Hello,
I am a new subscriber, and I am not an expert.
I am looking for multi-winner election with fair proportional
representation.
I would like to find a method allowing voters to vote “transversally”
through parties: it could decrease conflicts.
I would very appreciate if you can help me giving “guidelines”,
explaining pros and cons, advising further readings. I thank you very
much in advance.
*1. Best multi-winner ranked method for a PROPORTIONAL ASSEMBLY*
I read of CIVS
<http://civs.cs.cornell.edu/proportional.html> and Schulze-STV
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_STV>, and I thought they where
the best for my case.
They seems better then “traditional” STV since they satisfy more
criteria, with less strategic vote risk.
However I don’t understand differences among various condorcet’s
multi-winner systems.
_http://www.deborda.org/faq/_
but they used a non-proportional De Borda to elect their national
assembly (with DesBorda
<https://vistalegre2.podemos.info/la-asamblea/#Sistema_de_votacion> by
Echenique).
Others in the same party proposed (failing) the Dowdall variant
<https://forms.podemos.info/wp-content/uploads/gravity_forms/247-6edda8669dd26a992ea894158e3e3d91/2016/12/PropuestaPodemosEnMovimiento.pdf>
of De Borda (it is used in Nauru’s elections too). It seems it would
have been more proportional (here a simulation
<http://www.eldiario.es/politica/datos-cocina-votaciones-Podemos_0_612089572.html?utm_content=buffer93f9f&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer>,
3rd figure, compare /Sistema utilizado (/DesBorda) with /Propuesta de
Anticapitalista/ (Dowdall-Borda)).
However De Borda Institute recommends Quota Borda
System
http://www.deborda.org/faq/voting-systems/what-is-the-quota-borda-system-qbs.html
Actually I think there are few differences, for voters, between a
condorcet and a borda ballot (always numbering candidates). Is it?
But what are the difference in /results, /considering the proportional
variants?
Do you think PR-open list system helps more the more “conflictual”
candidates (as could be the leader of each party, since they are
overexposed to party electors “love” and to opposers “hate”)?
*2*. *Best multi-winner ranked method for a PROPORTIONAL MIXED-PARTIES
GOVERNMENT*
I was fascinated by De Borda Institute’s idea: a system to elect
directly a mixed government, where voters choose candidates AND best
offices for them.
They call it Matrix
Vote
http://www.deborda.org/faq/voting-systems/what-is-the-matrix-vote.html
Could be possible to reach this purpose also with other systems, for example Schulze-stv?
Best regards,
Thank you in advance
Armando Pitocco
----
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info

----
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info

--
Richard Lung.
http://www.voting.ukscientists.com
Democracy Science series 3 free e-books in pdf:
https://plus.google.com/106191200795605365085
E-books in epub format:
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/democracyscience

----
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info

VoteFair

2017-02-23 17:54:23 UTC

Permalink

Don't understand your remark about STV ...
... for a single national constituency.
...
The HG Wells formula is "Proportional representation by the single
transferable vote in large constituencies."

Post by VoteFair
STV (the Single Transferable Vote) and similar methods(!) are designed
for a small number of available seats, and it is a mistake to think
that such a method can simply be used repeatedly to achieve fair
results for a large number of available parliament seats.

Although the designers think that they designed STV to handle a full
national legislature/parliament, the method has the same flaw as
instant-runoff voting (IRV), namely the method looks at each voter's
currently top choice (after any candidate eliminations), and that
approach -- of assuming the candidate with the most such "votes" is the
most popular (or the inverse, assuming that the candidate with the
fewest such votes is least popular) -- is extremely flawed.

In other words, STV is like using single-mark ballots, except that when
a voter's marked candidate is eliminated, then the voter automatically
supplies an alternate single-mark ballot.

In spite of that major unfairness/flaw, STV would provide reasonably
acceptable results if only two seats were being filled. And if a nation
has 3 equally dominant political parties, then filling 3 seats for each
district would work.

However, as I stated before, STV would not provide fair results if it
were used for a full national legislature.

Recently, in Canada, some people have been promoting the idea of using
STV to elect about 5 MPs (members of parliament) from each district
(which they call a "riding"). That would produce very unfair results!
That's what I had in mind when I referred to using STV repeatedly.

Although Schulze-STV uses pairwise counting, it still has the same flaw
that it would not provide overall proportional results if it were used
repeatedly to fill more than 2 (or maybe 3) seats in each district. And
this method, and similar methods, would also provide flawed results if
it were used to fill all the seats in a national legislature (and those
reasons are explained in my book).

So, OK, I was not clear about the meaning of the word "designed." I was
referring to the effect of the design rather than the intention of the
design.

Richard Fobes

Don't understand your remark about STV, the name given by Thomas Hare,
who invented it for a single national constituency. (Tho Mill was
prepared to be flexible about this, when he moved "Mr Hare's system" of
Personal Representation in parliament.
The HG Wells formula is "Proportional representation by the single
transferable vote in large constituencies."
Agree with you about preference voting essential for fairness. Do you
have any good source for your assertion that the lack of it in European
party-proportional methods makes them especially vulnerable to moneied
influence?
You could say the same, for instance about the nuclear lobby in Britain
(tho not Scotland).
from Richard Lung.

Post by VoteFair

Post by Armando
...
I am looking for multi-winner election with fair proportional representation.
...
I would very appreciate if you can help me giving “guidelines”,
explaining pros and cons, advising further readings. ...

I suggest that you look at VoteFair ranking, which is a method I
developed years ago, over a span of about a decade.
It is described in detail in my book "Ending The Hidden Unfairness In
U.S. Elections," which is available through multiple e-book reading
platforms. The book includes lots of illustrations to make the
concepts easier for "average" (non-math) readers to understand. (With
so many illustrations the file size is large and the low price
basically just covers the download fee.)
Near the end of the book I explain that the same system would work in
other nations simply by increasing the number of parliament members
who are elected using cross-district voting methods.
Based on your questions, here is what I think is the most important
STV (the Single Transferable Vote) and similar methods(!) are designed
for a small number of available seats, and it is a mistake to think
that such a method can simply be used repeatedly to achieve fair
results for a large number of available parliament seats.
You seem to correctly understand that ranking candidates -- rather
than using single-mark ballots -- is essential for fair results. PR
(proportional representation) methods in Europe did not get this part
of PR correct. That's why it is easy for campaign contributions
(money) to easily control European politics.
With these concepts in mind, I suggest that you read the overview of
http://www.votefair.org/calculation_details.html
Or, for your convenience, here is a copy of those words, but without
........ begin quote ..........
VoteFair ranking is a calculation method that includes the following
* VoteFair popularity ranking, which identifies the most popular
choice, the second-most popular choice, the third-most popular choice,
and so on down to the least popular choice. Here is a link to details
about VoteFair popularity ranking.
* VoteFair representation ranking, which identifies the
most-representative choice (which is the same as the most popular
choice according to VoteFair popularity ranking), the second-most
representative choice, and additional representation levels. The
second-most representative choice is identified after appropriately
reducing the influence of the voters who are well represented by the
most-popular (and most-representative) choice. Without this
adjustment the same voters who are well-represented by the most
popular choice could also determine the second-place winner. Here is
a link to details about VoteFair representation ranking.
* VoteFair party ranking, which identifies the most-popular political
party (which is the same as the most popular choice according to
VoteFair popularity ranking), the second-most popular political party
(which is the same as the second-most representative choice), and the
political party that deserves to be recognized as the third-most
popular political party. The third-most popular party is identified
after appropriately reducing the influence of the voters who are well
represented by the first-ranked and second-ranked political parties.
Without this adjustment the same voters who are well-represented by
one of the most popular parties could create a "shadow" party that
occupies the third position, which would block smaller parties from
that third position. Here is a link to details about VoteFair party
ranking.
* VoteFair partial-proportional ranking, which identifies candidates
who failed to win a legislative seat in their district, yet deserve to
win special legislative seats for the purpose of compensating for
unfair district boundaries, making it possible to elect legislators
from "third" political parties (especially when the main political
parties fail to fully represent their political priorities. Without
this adjustment the balance of power among political parties in the
legislature can easily fail to match the voters' preferences for
political parties. Here is a link to details about VoteFair
partial-proportional ranking.
........ end quote ..........
For details about any part of VoteFair ranking, please go to the
webpage and click the appropriate link.
Thanks for your interest in learning how voting should be done!
If you have questions, just ask.
Richard Fobes
Author of "The Creative Problem Solver's Toolbox" which has been
published around the world in 10 languages

Post by Armando
Hello,
I am a new subscriber, and I am not an expert.
I am looking for multi-winner election with fair proportional representation.
I would like to find a method allowing voters to vote “transversally”
through parties: it could decrease conflicts.
I would very appreciate if you can help me giving “guidelines”,
explaining pros and cons, advising further readings. I thank you very
much in advance.
*1. Best multi-winner ranked method for a PROPORTIONAL ASSEMBLY*
I read of CIVS
<http://civs.cs.cornell.edu/proportional.html> and Schulze-STV
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_STV>, and I thought they where
the best for my case.
They seems better then “traditional” STV since they satisfy more
criteria, with less strategic vote risk.
However I don’t understand differences among various condorcet’s
multi-winner systems.
_http://www.deborda.org/faq/_
but they used a non-proportional De Borda to elect their national
assembly (with DesBorda
<https://vistalegre2.podemos.info/la-asamblea/#Sistema_de_votacion> by
Echenique).
Others in the same party proposed (failing) the Dowdall variant
<https://forms.podemos.info/wp-content/uploads/gravity_forms/247-6edda8669dd26a992ea894158e3e3d91/2016/12/PropuestaPodemosEnMovimiento.pdf>
of De Borda (it is used in Nauru’s elections too). It seems it would
have been more proportional (here a simulation
<http://www.eldiario.es/politica/datos-cocina-votaciones-Podemos_0_612089572.html?utm_content=buffer93f9f&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer>,
3rd figure, compare /Sistema utilizado (/DesBorda) with /Propuesta de
Anticapitalista/ (Dowdall-Borda)).
However De Borda Institute recommends Quota Borda
System
http://www.deborda.org/faq/voting-systems/what-is-the-quota-borda-system-qbs.html
Actually I think there are few differences, for voters, between a
condorcet and a borda ballot (always numbering candidates). Is it?
But what are the difference in /results, /considering the proportional
variants?
Do you think PR-open list system helps more the more “conflictual”
candidates (as could be the leader of each party, since they are
overexposed to party electors “love” and to opposers “hate”)?
*2*. *Best multi-winner ranked method for a PROPORTIONAL MIXED-PARTIES
GOVERNMENT*
I was fascinated by De Borda Institute’s idea: a system to elect
directly a mixed government, where voters choose candidates AND best
offices for them.
They call it Matrix
Vote
http://www.deborda.org/faq/voting-systems/what-is-the-matrix-vote.html
Could be possible to reach this purpose also with other systems, for
example Schulze-stv?
Best regards,
Thank you in advance
Armando Pitocco
----
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info

----
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info

James Gilmour

2017-02-23 18:43:13 UTC

Permalink

Richard Fobes (VoteFair) Sent: 23 February 2017 17:54
However, as I stated before, STV would not provide fair results if it were used for a full national legislature.
Recently, in Canada, some people have been promoting the idea of using STV to elect about 5 MPs (members of parliament) from
each district (which they call a "riding"). That would produce very unfair results!
That's what I had in mind when I referred to using STV repeatedly.

Please see the attached results of some STV-PR elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly.

If Canada had results like those from its Federal and Provincial elections no-one would be calling for electoral reform in Canada.

James Gilmour
Edinburgh, Scotland

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Stéphane Rouillon

2017-02-23 18:56:37 UTC

Permalink

I agree with Richard Lung: STV could very well fit for a country using many representatives in bigger districts. I do not understand Mr. Fobes critics'...

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Post by James Gilmour

Please see the attached results of some STV-PR elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly.
If Canada had results like those from its Federal and Provincial elections no-one would be calling for electoral reform in Canada.
James Gilmour
Edinburgh, Scotland
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Juho Laatu

2017-02-23 23:09:59 UTC

Permalink

I just note that it would be useful to have some numeric requirements available when the usefulness of different proportional voting methods is evaluated. Some useful numbers (and other requirements) could be the number of candidates per district (e.g. 200, maybe 30 for each party), number of seats per district (e.g. 30), number of districts (e.g. 15), variation in the size of the districts (e.g. from 3 to 30 seats), handling of "overflow" and "lost" votes (e.g. votes to small parties in a district that has only 3 seats), required accuracy of proportionality (e.g. droop or hare proportionality at national level, or separately at each district), requirement of equal treatment of parties that get their support from one district only vs. evenly from all districts, planned style and accepted complexity of the ballots or voting machines, ability to vote for individual candidates, ability to vote multiple individual candidates across party borderlines, accuracy of party internal proportionality, ability to vote for one's favourite party (e.g. vote to one candidate inherited by other candidates of the party).

Juho

Post by StÃ©phane Rouillon
I agree with Richard Lung: STV could very well fit for a country using many representatives in bigger districts. I do not understand Mr. Fobes critics'...
Envoyé de mon iPhone

Post by James Gilmour

Please see the attached results of some STV-PR elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly.
If Canada had results like those from its Federal and Provincial elections no-one would be calling for electoral reform in Canada.
James Gilmour
Edinburgh, Scotland
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<NI Assembly 1998 & 2003.pdf>
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VoteFair

2017-02-27 05:00:17 UTC

Permalink

Post by James Gilmour
Please see the attached results of some STV-PR elections
to the Northern Ireland Assembly.
If Canada had results like those from its Federal and
Provincial elections no-one would be calling for
electoral reform in Canada.

The referenced data supports my belief that the number of seats per
district is heavily correlated with the number of popular political parties.

In this case there are 6 seats per district, and there are about 6
popular political parties. Specifically the political-party count
includes 4 popular parties that apparently fill the first 4 seats, and
then another 4 mid-popular parties that compete for the next 2 seats (in
each district). (The least-popular parties rarely get seats.)

Although in this case the correlation -- between seats per district and
number of popular political parties -- is a simple correlation, other
correlations are possible.

As a hypothetical example, if there were 5 seats per district, two
dominant political parties might typically win the first four seats (two
seats per party), and less-popular parties might often win the remaining
5-th seat (with different parties winning in different districts).

The more political parties there are, the messier it is to create a
ruling coalition that really represents what the voters want. Too often
a coalition compromises on issues that are most important to the voters
in those parties. If anyone doesn't understand this disadvantage of
needing coalitions, which I've explained before, please ask.

One of the advantages of VoteFair ranking is that it favors fewer
political parties in order to let the voters form their own coalitions
-- in the form of very popular political parties. Yet the method allows
as many parties as the voters really want.

VoteFair ranking accommodates as many parties as possible, yet limits
the number of candidates in each race. Here is how:

* In every election the popularity of parties is re-measured, and the
popularity rankings are used in the next election.

* Each of the two most popular parties can offer two candidates (per party).

* The mid-popular parties can offer just one candidate each.

* The currently least-popular parties are not allowed to offer any
candidates in the race -- in that district, based on party popularities
within that district. (The popularity of parties can vary from district
to district, and only that district's popularity rankings are used for
these cutoffs.)

* The limited number of candidates allows voters to get to know these
candidates better, which is important for ranking them meaningfully
(without saying "after my first and second choice I have an equal
dislike for the remaining candidates").

In a sense, VoteFair ranking does the opposite of what closed-list PR
does. Closed-list PR gives control to party leaders, instead of giving
control to the voters. In contrast, VoteFair ranking gives control to
the voters, so that "insider" candidates (who are liked by party
leaders) cannot get elected -- to either the district seats or the
nationwide seats -- unless they are ALSO the most popular candidates
according to the voters.

The latest development in the U.S. Democratic party serves as an example
of the unfairness of a party being controlled by insiders, rather than
voters. Specifically the new chairperson of the Democratic party was
the insider favorite. Most Democratic voters would have preferred the
candidate who was favored by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who
the voters prefer as the most popular Senators in the Democratic party.

Since the above PR-related comments are about closed-list PR, I'll add
that open-list PR is better, yet it uses single-mark ballots, which are
vulnerable to tactics that take advantage of vote splitting.

Another important point about STV is that it fails to consider all the
preferences of all the voters. Instead, like IRV, it is based on the
mistaken belief that the candidate with the most currently-first-choice
"votes" is most popular, and the candidate with the fewest
currently-first-choice "votes" is least popular. This flaw makes it
easier for the "wrong" (less-popular) candidate to win a seat.

This flaw was recently demonstrated in the U.S. Republican presidential
primary election, where single-mark ballots were used and there were
more than a dozen (12) candidates. The more candidates there are in a
race (not counting the ones who get very few votes), the more dramatic
this unfairness can be.

Expressed another way, the first priority should be to fill seats with
the most popular candidates, and the second priority should be to get
some degree of proportional results for the remaining seats.

VoteFair ranking follows this prioritization. Specifically:

* 1-2-3 ballots and pairwise counting are used to fill the first seat in
each district.

* The second seat in each district is filled by the most popular
candidate (using 1-2-3 ballots and pairwise counting) after
proportionally reducing the influence of the voters who are already
well-represented by the first-seat winner.

* Some remaining "nationwide" seats are allocated to political parties
based on the voters' party preferences (i.e. voters rank political
parties and the first choice is used for this purpose). The nationwide
seats are filled with candidates who were the most popular (in their
party) within their district (but failed to win a district seat), and
who got the most support when compared across district boundaries.

This approach is much fairer than allowing parties to choose their
favorite insiders.

In particular, it defeats the strategy of each party offering just one
"insider" candidate. (The second candidate from the same popular party
is optional, but a popular party that does not offer a second candidate
will become less popular because the manipulation becomes obvious.)

To repeat my original key point, any voting method that only looks at
one voter's currently-top candidate at a time cannot produce fair
results. Fair results can only be assured if all the preferences of all
the voters are considered pairwise (not simplistically one-at-a-time).

Just hiding the unfairness -- by making adjustments according to
political-party "quotas" -- is not solving the underlying unfairness.

Yes, proportionality is desireable, but not at the expense of ending up
with less-popular candidates.

Both can be achieved, but:

* PR sacrifices fairness by not providing a fair way to control which
candidates win each party's seats.

* STV sacrifices fairness in several ways:

** Through its counting method.

** Through what I'll call "round-off errors" if it is used to fill more
than 2 seats per district (and if the number of seats does not happen to
match the current number of popular political parties).

** It does not handle adjustments in "nationwide" seats, after the
round-off errors have accumulated over all the districts.

Questions? Please ask.

Richard Fobes

Post by James Gilmour

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Toby Pereira

2017-02-23 20:08:45 UTC

Permalink

Does the VoteFair method obey a specific proportionality property? For example, if you insist on electing the Condorcet winner, this is incompatible with Droop proportionality - e.g. https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/electionscience/n__VhVgjJqg

From: VoteFair <***@votefair.org>
To: "election-***@lists.electorama.com" <election-***@lists.electorama.com>
Sent: Thursday, 23 February 2017, 17:54
Subject: Re: [EM] Proportional multi-winner ranked voting methods - guidelines?

Don't understand your remark about STV ...
... for a single national constituency.
...
The HG Wells formula is "Proportional representation by the single
transferable vote in large constituencies."

Although the designers think that they designed STV to handle a full
national legislature/parliament, the method has the same flaw as
instant-runoff voting (IRV), namely the method looks at each voter's
currently top choice (after any candidate eliminations), and that
approach -- of assuming the candidate with the most such "votes" is the
most popular (or the inverse, assuming that the candidate with the
fewest such votes is least popular) -- is extremely flawed.

In other words, STV is like using single-mark ballots, except that when
a voter's marked candidate is eliminated, then the voter automatically
supplies an alternate single-mark ballot.

In spite of that major unfairness/flaw, STV would provide reasonably
acceptable results if only two seats were being filled.Â And if a nation
has 3 equally dominant political parties, then filling 3 seats for each
district would work.

However, as I stated before, STV would not provide fair results if it
were used for a full national legislature.

Recently, in Canada, some people have been promoting the idea of using
STV to elect about 5 MPs (members of parliament) from each district
(which they call a "riding").Â That would produce very unfair results!
That's what I had in mind when I referred to using STV repeatedly.

Although Schulze-STV uses pairwise counting, it still has the same flaw
that it would not provide overall proportional results if it were used
repeatedly to fill more than 2 (or maybe 3) seats in each district.Â And
this method, and similar methods, would also provide flawed results if
it were used to fill all the seats in a national legislature (and those
reasons are explained in my book).

So, OK, I was not clear about the meaning of the word "designed."Â I was
referring to the effect of the design rather than the intention of the
design.

Richard Fobes

Don't understand your remark about STV, the name given by Thomas Hare,
who invented it for a single national constituency. (Tho Mill was
prepared to be flexible about this, when he moved "Mr Hare's system" of
Personal Representation in parliament.
The HG Wells formula is "Proportional representation by the single
transferable vote in large constituencies."
Agree with you about preference voting essential for fairness. Do you
have any good source for your assertion that the lack of it in European
party-proportional methods makes them especially vulnerable to moneied
influence?
You could say the same, for instance about the nuclear lobby in Britain
(tho not Scotland).
from Richard Lung.

Post by VoteFair

Post by Armando
...
I am looking for multi-winner election with fair proportional representation.
...
I would very appreciate if you can help me giving âguidelinesâ,
explaining pros and cons, advising further readings. ...

I suggest that you look at VoteFair ranking, which is a method I
developed years ago, over a span of about a decade.
It is described in detail in my book "Ending The Hidden Unfairness In
U.S. Elections," which is available through multiple e-book reading
platforms.Â The book includes lots of illustrations to make the
concepts easier for "average" (non-math) readers to understand.Â (With
so many illustrations the file size is large and the low price
basically just covers the download fee.)
Near the end of the book I explain that the same system would work in
other nations simply by increasing the number of parliament members
who are elected using cross-district voting methods.
Based on your questions, here is what I think is the most important
STV (the Single Transferable Vote) and similar methods(!) are designed
for a small number of available seats, and it is a mistake to think
that such a method can simply be used repeatedly to achieve fair
results for a large number of available parliament seats.
You seem to correctly understand that ranking candidates -- rather
than using single-mark ballots -- is essential for fair results.Â PR
(proportional representation) methods in Europe did not get this part
of PR correct.Â That's why it is easy for campaign contributions
(money) to easily control European politics.
With these concepts in mind, I suggest that you read the overview of
http://www.votefair.org/calculation_details.html
Or, for your convenience, here is a copy of those words, but without
........ begin quote ..........
VoteFair ranking is a calculation method that includes the following
* VoteFair popularity ranking, which identifies the most popular
choice, the second-most popular choice, the third-most popular choice,
and so on down to the least popular choice.Â Here is a link to details
about VoteFair popularity ranking.
* VoteFair representation ranking, which identifies the
most-representative choice (which is the same as the most popular
choice according to VoteFair popularity ranking), the second-most
representative choice, and additional representation levels.Â The
second-most representative choice is identified after appropriately
reducing the influence of the voters who are well represented by the
most-popular (and most-representative) choice.Â Without this
adjustment the same voters who are well-represented by the most
popular choice could also determine the second-place winner.Â Here is
a link to details about VoteFair representation ranking.
* VoteFair party ranking, which identifies the most-popular political
party (which is the same as the most popular choice according to
VoteFair popularity ranking), the second-most popular political party
(which is the same as the second-most representative choice), and the
political party that deserves to be recognized as the third-most
popular political party.Â The third-most popular party is identified
after appropriately reducing the influence of the voters who are well
represented by the first-ranked and second-ranked political parties.
Without this adjustment the same voters who are well-represented by
one of the most popular parties could create a "shadow" party that
occupies the third position, which would block smaller parties from
that third position.Â Here is a link to details about VoteFair party
ranking.
* VoteFair partial-proportional ranking, which identifies candidates
who failed to win a legislative seat in their district, yet deserve to
win special legislative seats for the purpose of compensating for
unfair district boundaries, making it possible to elect legislators
from "third" political parties (especially when the main political
parties fail to fully represent their political priorities.Â Without
this adjustment the balance of power among political parties in the
legislature can easily fail to match the voters' preferences for
political parties.Â Here is a link to details about VoteFair
partial-proportional ranking.
........ end quote ..........
For details about any part of VoteFair ranking, please go to the
webpage and click the appropriate link.
Thanks for your interest in learning how voting should be done!
If you have questions, just ask.
Richard Fobes
Author of "The Creative Problem Solver's Toolbox" which has been
published around the world in 10 languages

Post by Armando
Hello,
I am a new subscriber, and I am not an expert.
I am looking for multi-winner election with fair proportional representation.
I would like to find a method allowing voters to vote âtransversallyâ
through parties: it could decrease conflicts.
I would very appreciate if you can help me giving âguidelinesâ,
explaining pros and cons, advising further readings. I thank you very
much in advance.
*1. Best multi-winner ranked method for a PROPORTIONAL ASSEMBLY*
I read of CIVS
<http://civs.cs.cornell.edu/proportional.html> and Schulze-STV
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_STV>, and I thought they where
the best for my case.
They seems better then âtraditionalâ STV since they satisfy more
criteria, with less strategic vote risk.
However I donât understand differences among various condorcetâs
multi-winner systems.
_http://www.deborda.org/faq/_
but they used a non-proportional De Borda to elect their national
assembly (with DesBorda
<https://vistalegre2.podemos.info/la-asamblea/#Sistema_de_votacion> by
Echenique).
Others in the same party proposed (failing) the Dowdall variant
<https://forms.podemos.info/wp-content/uploads/gravity_forms/247-6edda8669dd26a992ea894158e3e3d91/2016/12/PropuestaPodemosEnMovimiento.pdf>
of De Borda (it is used in Nauruâs elections too). It seems it would
have been more proportional (here a simulation
<http://www.eldiario.es/politica/datos-cocina-votaciones-Podemos_0_612089572.html?utm_content=buffer93f9f&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer>,
3rd figure, compare /Sistema utilizado (/DesBorda) with /Propuesta de
Anticapitalista/ (Dowdall-Borda)).
However De Borda Institute recommends Quota Borda
System
http://www.deborda.org/faq/voting-systems/what-is-the-quota-borda-system-qbs.html
Actually I think there are few differences, for voters, between a
condorcet and a borda ballot (always numbering candidates). Is it?
But what are the difference in /results, /considering the proportional
variants?
Do you think PR-open list system helps more the more âconflictualâ
candidates (as could be the leader of each party, since they are
overexposed to party electors âloveâ and to opposers âhateâ)?
*2*. *Best multi-winner ranked method for a PROPORTIONAL MIXED-PARTIES
GOVERNMENT*
I was fascinated by De Borda Instituteâs idea: a system to elect
directly a mixed government, where voters choose candidates AND best
offices for them.
They call it Matrix
Vote
http://www.deborda.org/faq/voting-systems/what-is-the-matrix-vote.html
Could be possible to reach this purpose also with other systems, for
example Schulze-stv?
Best regards,
Thank you in advance
Armando Pitocco
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robert bristow-johnson

2017-02-23 20:59:11 UTC

Permalink

i wasn't aware that any STV would be Condorcet compliant (except for bottom-two runoff STV).
my only thought about a multi-winner method that *is* Condorcet compliant is to simply run the rank-choice election according to some Condorcet method (say Schulze or RP or MinMax or
BTR-STV), pick the Condorcet winner and assign that candidate to the first available seat, decrement the number of available seats by one, remove this winner from the candidate pool, and then see who the next Condorcet winner is from the remaining candidates. rinse and repeat until all
available seats are assigned.
what would be wrong with that approach to multi-winner elections?

--
r b-j ***@audioimagination.com
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------

Subject: Re: [EM] Proportional multi-winner ranked voting methods - guidelines?

From: "Toby Pereira" <***@yahoo.co.uk>

Date: Thu, February 23, 2017 2:08 pm

To: "VoteFair" <***@votefair.org>

"election-***@lists.electorama.com" <election-***@lists.electorama.com>

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Post by Toby Pereira
Does the VoteFair method obey a specific proportionality property? For example, if you insist on electing the Condorcet winner, this is incompatible with Droop proportionality - e.g. https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/electionscience/n__VhVgjJqg
Sent: Thursday, 23 February 2017, 17:54
Subject: Re: [EM] Proportional multi-winner ranked voting methods - guidelines?

Don't understand your remark about STV ...
... for a single national constituency.
...
The HG Wells formula is "Proportional representation by the single
transferable vote in large constituencies."

Although the designers think that they designed STV to handle a full
national legislature/parliament, the method has the same flaw as
instant-runoff voting (IRV), namely the method looks at each voter's
currently top choice (after any candidate eliminations), and that
approach -- of assuming the candidate with the most such "votes" is the
most popular (or the inverse, assuming that the candidate with the
fewest such votes is least popular) -- is extremely flawed.
In other words, STV is like using single-mark ballots, except that when
a voter's marked candidate is eliminated, then the voter automatically
supplies an alternate single-mark ballot.
In spite of that major unfairness/flaw, STV would provide reasonably
acceptable results if only two seats were being filled. And if a nation
has 3 equally dominant political parties, then filling 3 seats for each
district would work.
However, as I stated before, STV would not provide fair results if it
were used for a full national legislature.
Recently, in Canada, some people have been promoting the idea of using
STV to elect about 5 MPs (members of parliament) from each district
(which they call a "riding"). That would produce very unfair results!
That's what I had in mind when I referred to using STV repeatedly.
Although Schulze-STV uses pairwise counting, it still has the same flaw
that it would not provide overall proportional results if it were used
repeatedly to fill more than 2 (or maybe 3) seats in each district. And
this method, and similar methods, would also provide flawed results if
it were used to fill all the seats in a national legislature (and those
reasons are explained in my book).
So, OK, I was not clear about the meaning of the word "designed." I was
referring to the effect of the design rather than the intention of the
design.
Richard Fobes

Don't understand your remark about STV, the name given by Thomas Hare,
who invented it for a single national constituency. (Tho Mill was
prepared to be flexible about this, when he moved "Mr Hare's system" of
Personal Representation in parliament.
The HG Wells formula is "Proportional representation by the single
transferable vote in large constituencies."
Agree with you about preference voting essential for fairness. Do you
have any good source for your assertion that the lack of it in European
party-proportional methods makes them especially vulnerable to moneied
influence?
You could say the same, for instance about the nuclear lobby in Britain
(tho not Scotland).
from Richard Lung.

Post by VoteFair

I suggest that you look at VoteFair ranking, which is a method I
developed years ago, over a span of about a decade.
It is described in detail in my book "Ending The Hidden Unfairness In
U.S. Elections," which is available through multiple e-book reading
platforms. The book includes lots of illustrations to make the
concepts easier for "average" (non-math) readers to understand. (With
so many illustrations the file size is large and the low price
basically just covers the download fee.)
Near the end of the book I explain that the same system would work in
other nations simply by increasing the number of parliament members
who are elected using cross-district voting methods.
Based on your questions, here is what I think is the most important
STV (the Single Transferable Vote) and similar methods(!) are designed
for a small number of available seats, and it is a mistake to think
that such a method can simply be used repeatedly to achieve fair
results for a large number of available parliament seats.
You seem to correctly understand that ranking candidates -- rather
than using single-mark ballots -- is essential for fair results. PR
(proportional representation) methods in Europe did not get this part
of PR correct. That's why it is easy for campaign contributions
(money) to easily control European politics.
With these concepts in mind, I suggest that you read the overview of
http://www.votefair.org/calculation_details.html
Or, for your convenience, here is a copy of those words, but without
........ begin quote ..........
VoteFair ranking is a calculation method that includes the following
* VoteFair popularity ranking, which identifies the most popular
choice, the second-most popular choice, the third-most popular choice,
and so on down to the least popular choice. Here is a link to details
about VoteFair popularity ranking.
* VoteFair representation ranking, which identifies the
most-representative choice (which is the same as the most popular
choice according to VoteFair popularity ranking), the second-most
representative choice, and additional representation levels. The
second-most representative choice is identified after appropriately
reducing the influence of the voters who are well represented by the
most-popular (and most-representative) choice. Without this
adjustment the same voters who are well-represented by the most
popular choice could also determine the second-place winner. Here is
a link to details about VoteFair representation ranking.
* VoteFair party ranking, which identifies the most-popular political
party (which is the same as the most popular choice according to
VoteFair popularity ranking), the second-most popular political party
(which is the same as the second-most representative choice), and the
political party that deserves to be recognized as the third-most
popular political party. The third-most popular party is identified
after appropriately reducing the influence of the voters who are well
represented by the first-ranked and second-ranked political parties.
Without this adjustment the same voters who are well-represented by
one of the most popular parties could create a "shadow" party that
occupies the third position, which would block smaller parties from
that third position. Here is a link to details about VoteFair party
ranking.
* VoteFair partial-proportional ranking, which identifies candidates
who failed to win a legislative seat in their district, yet deserve to
win special legislative seats for the purpose of compensating for
unfair district boundaries, making it possible to elect legislators
from "third" political parties (especially when the main political
parties fail to fully represent their political priorities. Without
this adjustment the balance of power among political parties in the
legislature can easily fail to match the voters' preferences for
political parties. Here is a link to details about VoteFair
partial-proportional ranking.
........ end quote ..........
For details about any part of VoteFair ranking, please go to the
webpage and click the appropriate link.
Thanks for your interest in learning how voting should be done!
If you have questions, just ask.
Richard Fobes
Author of "The Creative Problem Solver's Toolbox" which has been
published around the world in 10 languages

Post by Armando
Hello,
I am a new subscriber, and I am not an expert.
I am looking for multi-winner election with fair proportional
representation.
I would like to find a method allowing voters to vote “transversally”
through parties: it could decrease conflicts.
I would very appreciate if you can help me giving “guidelines”,
explaining pros and cons, advising further readings. I thank you very
much in advance.
*1. Best multi-winner ranked method for a PROPORTIONAL ASSEMBLY*
I read of CIVS
<http://civs.cs.cornell.edu/proportional.html> and Schulze-STV
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_STV>, and I thought they where
the best for my case.
They seems better then “traditional” STV since they satisfy more
criteria, with less strategic vote risk.
However I don’t understand differences among various condorcet’s
multi-winner systems.
_http://www.deborda.org/faq/_
but they used a non-proportional De Borda to elect their national
assembly (with DesBorda
<https://vistalegre2.podemos.info/la-asamblea/#Sistema_de_votacion> by
Echenique).
Others in the same party proposed (failing) the Dowdall variant
<https://forms.podemos.info/wp-content/uploads/gravity_forms/247-6edda8669dd26a992ea894158e3e3d91/2016/12/PropuestaPodemosEnMovimiento.pdf>
of De Borda (it is used in Nauru’s elections too). It seems it would
have been more proportional (here a simulation
<http://www.eldiario.es/politica/datos-cocina-votaciones-Podemos_0_612089572.html?utm_content=buffer93f9f&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer>,
3rd figure, compare /Sistema utilizado (/DesBorda) with /Propuesta de
Anticapitalista/ (Dowdall-Borda)).
However De Borda Institute recommends Quota Borda
System
http://www.deborda.org/faq/voting-systems/what-is-the-quota-borda-system-qbs.html
Actually I think there are few differences, for voters, between a
condorcet and a borda ballot (always numbering candidates). Is it?
But what are the difference in /results, /considering the proportional
variants?
Do you think PR-open list system helps more the more “conflictual”
candidates (as could be the leader of each party, since they are
overexposed to party electors “love” and to opposers “hate”)?
*2*. *Best multi-winner ranked method for a PROPORTIONAL MIXED-PARTIES
GOVERNMENT*
I was fascinated by De Borda Institute’s idea: a system to elect
directly a mixed government, where voters choose candidates AND best
offices for them.
They call it Matrix
Vote
http://www.deborda.org/faq/voting-systems/what-is-the-matrix-vote.html
Could be possible to reach this purpose also with other systems, for
example Schulze-stv?
Best regards,
Thank you in advance
Armando Pitocco
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Toby Pereira

2017-02-23 22:09:14 UTC

Permalink

I suppose it depends what you want from a multi-winner election. A faction of 51% could command all the seats if you did it that way.

From: robert bristow-johnson <***@audioimagination.com>
To: "election-***@lists.electorama.com" <election-***@lists.electorama.com>
Sent: Thursday, 23 February 2017, 20:59
Subject: Re: [EM] Proportional multi-winner ranked voting methods - guidelines?

Â i wasn't aware that any STV would be Condorcet compliant (except for bottom-two runoff STV).my only thought about a multi-winner method that *is* Condorcet compliant is to simply run the rank-choice election according to some Condorcet method (say Schulze or RP or MinMax orBTR-STV), pick the Condorcet winner and assign that candidate to the first available seat, decrement the number of available seats by one, remove this winner from the candidate pool, and then see who the next Condorcet winner is from the remaining candidates. Â rinse and repeat until allavailable seats are assigned.what would be wrong with that approach to multi-winner elections?
--r b-j Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â ***@audioimagination.com"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Re: [EM] Proportional multi-winner ranked voting methods - guidelines?
From: "Toby Pereira" <***@yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Thu, February 23, 2017 2:08 pm
To: "VoteFair" <***@votefair.org>
"election-***@lists.electorama.com" <election-***@lists.electorama.com>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Don't understand your remark about STV ...
... for a single national constituency.
...
The HG Wells formula is "Proportional representation by the single
transferable vote in large constituencies."

Although the designers think that they designed STV to handle a full
national legislature/parliament, the method has the same flaw as
instant-runoff voting (IRV), namely the method looks at each voter's
currently top choice (after any candidate eliminations), and that
approach -- of assuming the candidate with the most such "votes" is the
most popular (or the inverse, assuming that the candidate with the
fewest such votes is least popular) -- is extremely flawed.
In other words, STV is like using single-mark ballots, except that when
a voter's marked candidate is eliminated, then the voter automatically
supplies an alternate single-mark ballot.
In spite of that major unfairness/flaw, STV would provide reasonably
acceptable results if only two seats were being filled.Â And if a nation
has 3 equally dominant political parties, then filling 3 seats for each
district would work.
However, as I stated before, STV would not provide fair results if it
were used for a full national legislature.
Recently, in Canada, some people have been promoting the idea of using
STV to elect about 5 MPs (members of parliament) from each district
(which they call a "riding").Â That would produce very unfair results!
That's what I had in mind when I referred to using STV repeatedly.
Although Schulze-STV uses pairwise counting, it still has the same flaw
that it would not provide overall proportional results if it were used
repeatedly to fill more than 2 (or maybe 3) seats in each district.Â And
this method, and similar methods, would also provide flawed results if
it were used to fill all the seats in a national legislature (and those
reasons are explained in my book).
So, OK, I was not clear about the meaning of the word "designed."Â I was
referring to the effect of the design rather than the intention of the
design.
Richard Fobes

Don't understand your remark about STV, the name given by Thomas Hare,
who invented it for a single national constituency. (Tho Mill was
prepared to be flexible about this, when he moved "Mr Hare's system" of
Personal Representation in parliament.
The HG Wells formula is "Proportional representation by the single
transferable vote in large constituencies."
Agree with you about preference voting essential for fairness. Do you
have any good source for your assertion that the lack of it in European
party-proportional methods makes them especially vulnerable to moneied
influence?
You could say the same, for instance about the nuclear lobby in Britain
(tho not Scotland).
from Richard Lung.

Post by VoteFair

I suggest that you look at VoteFair ranking, which is a method I
developed years ago, over a span of about a decade.
It is described in detail in my book "Ending The Hidden Unfairness In
U.S. Elections," which is available through multiple e-book reading
platforms.Â The book includes lots of illustrations to make the
concepts easier for "average" (non-math) readers to understand.Â (With
so many illustrations the file size is large and the low price
basically just covers the download fee.)
Near the end of the book I explain that the same system would work in
other nations simply by increasing the number of parliament members
who are elected using cross-district voting methods.
Based on your questions, here is what I think is the most important
STV (the Single Transferable Vote) and similar methods(!) are designed
for a small number of available seats, and it is a mistake to think
that such a method can simply be used repeatedly to achieve fair
results for a large number of available parliament seats.
You seem to correctly understand that ranking candidates -- rather
than using single-mark ballots -- is essential for fair results.Â PR
(proportional representation) methods in Europe did not get this part
of PR correct.Â That's why it is easy for campaign contributions
(money) to easily control European politics.
With these concepts in mind, I suggest that you read the overview of
http://www.votefair.org/calculation_details.html
Or, for your convenience, here is a copy of those words, but without
........ begin quote ..........
VoteFair ranking is a calculation method that includes the following
* VoteFair popularity ranking, which identifies the most popular
choice, the second-most popular choice, the third-most popular choice,
and so on down to the least popular choice.Â Here is a link to details
about VoteFair popularity ranking.
* VoteFair representation ranking, which identifies the
most-representative choice (which is the same as the most popular
choice according to VoteFair popularity ranking), the second-most
representative choice, and additional representation levels.Â The
second-most representative choice is identified after appropriately
reducing the influence of the voters who are well represented by the
most-popular (and most-representative) choice.Â Without this
adjustment the same voters who are well-represented by the most
popular choice could also determine the second-place winner.Â Here is
a link to details about VoteFair representation ranking.
* VoteFair party ranking, which identifies the most-popular political
party (which is the same as the most popular choice according to
VoteFair popularity ranking), the second-most popular political party
(which is the same as the second-most representative choice), and the
political party that deserves to be recognized as the third-most
popular political party.Â The third-most popular party is identified
after appropriately reducing the influence of the voters who are well
represented by the first-ranked and second-ranked political parties.
Without this adjustment the same voters who are well-represented by
one of the most popular parties could create a "shadow" party that
occupies the third position, which would block smaller parties from
that third position.Â Here is a link to details about VoteFair party
ranking.
* VoteFair partial-proportional ranking, which identifies candidates
who failed to win a legislative seat in their district, yet deserve to
win special legislative seats for the purpose of compensating for
unfair district boundaries, making it possible to elect legislators
from "third" political parties (especially when the main political
parties fail to fully represent their political priorities.Â Without
this adjustment the balance of power among political parties in the
legislature can easily fail to match the voters' preferences for
political parties.Â Here is a link to details about VoteFair
partial-proportional ranking.
........ end quote ..........
For details about any part of VoteFair ranking, please go to the
webpage and click the appropriate link.
Thanks for your interest in learning how voting should be done!
If you have questions, just ask.
Richard Fobes
Author of "The Creative Problem Solver's Toolbox" which has been
published around the world in 10 languages

Post by Armando
Hello,
I am a new subscriber, and I am not an expert.
I am looking for multi-winner election with fair proportional representation.
I would like to find a method allowing voters to vote âtransversallyâ
through parties: it could decrease conflicts.
I would very appreciate if you can help me giving âguidelinesâ,
explaining pros and cons, advising further readings. I thank you very
much in advance.
*1. Best multi-winner ranked method for a PROPORTIONAL ASSEMBLY*
I read of CIVS
<http://civs.cs.cornell.edu/proportional.html> and Schulze-STV
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_STV>, and I thought they where
the best for my case.
They seems better then âtraditionalâ STV since they satisfy more
criteria, with less strategic vote risk.
However I donât understand differences among various condorcetâs
multi-winner systems.
_http://www.deborda.org/faq/_
but they used a non-proportional De Borda to elect their national
assembly (with DesBorda
<https://vistalegre2.podemos.info/la-asamblea/#Sistema_de_votacion> by
Echenique).
Others in the same party proposed (failing) the Dowdall variant
<https://forms.podemos.info/wp-content/uploads/gravity_forms/247-6edda8669dd26a992ea894158e3e3d91/2016/12/PropuestaPodemosEnMovimiento.pdf>
of De Borda (it is used in Nauruâs elections too). It seems it would
have been more proportional (here a simulation
<http://www.eldiario.es/politica/datos-cocina-votaciones-Podemos_0_612089572.html?utm_content=buffer93f9f&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer>,
3rd figure, compare /Sistema utilizado (/DesBorda) with /Propuesta de
Anticapitalista/ (Dowdall-Borda)).
However De Borda Institute recommends Quota Borda
System
http://www.deborda.org/faq/voting-systems/what-is-the-quota-borda-system-qbs.html
Actually I think there are few differences, for voters, between a
condorcet and a borda ballot (always numbering candidates). Is it?
But what are the difference in /results, /considering the proportional
variants?
Do you think PR-open list system helps more the more âconflictualâ
candidates (as could be the leader of each party, since they are
overexposed to party electors âloveâ and to opposers âhateâ)?
*2*. *Best multi-winner ranked method for a PROPORTIONAL MIXED-PARTIES
GOVERNMENT*
I was fascinated by De Borda Instituteâs idea: a system to elect
directly a mixed government, where voters choose candidates AND best
offices for them.
They call it Matrix
Vote
http://www.deborda.org/faq/voting-systems/what-is-the-matrix-vote.html
Could be possible to reach this purpose also with other systems, for
example Schulze-stv?
Best regards,
Thank you in advance
Armando Pitocco
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Â

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Kristofer Munsterhjelm

2017-02-23 22:20:20 UTC

Permalink

Post by robert bristow-johnson
i wasn't aware that any STV would be Condorcet compliant (except for
bottom-two runoff STV).
my only thought about a multi-winner method that *is* Condorcet
compliant is to simply run the rank-choice election according to some
Condorcet method (say Schulze or RP or MinMax or BTR-STV), pick the
Condorcet winner and assign that candidate to the first available seat,
decrement the number of available seats by one, remove this winner from
the candidate pool, and then see who the next Condorcet winner is from
the remaining candidates. rinse and repeat until all available seats
are assigned.
what would be wrong with that approach to multi-winner elections?

That method fails the Droop proportionality criterion and amplifies
majorities into unanimities.

E.g.

51: A>B>C>D
49: E>F>G>H

Four to elect gives a council of {A, B, C, D}. If one wants a
proportional outcome (which is what all the quota business in STV is
intended to accomplish), then a majoritarian multiwinner Condorcet
election doesn't help much. If you want a majoritarian method, then it's
okay, but the subject says "Proportional" :-)

A more proportional Condorcet method could be accomplished this way -- I
think that would be the most simple somewhat proportional Condorcet
method. For n seats:

* Repeat lots of times:
- Randomly divide the voters into n groups
- Order the groups in random order.
- Determine the first group's winner according to the Condorcet method.
- Give the first seat to this winner and eliminate him from every
ballot (of every group).
- Determine the second group's winner, elect, and eliminate.
- Do so until you have n candidate assignments.
* Choose the assembly that you saw most often.

In the 51/49 example above, it's basically a coin toss as to whether any
given group will elect one of {A,B,C,D} or one of {E,F,G,H}, and so you
get a 50-50 split.
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robert bristow-johnson

2017-02-24 04:45:40 UTC

Permalink

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------

Subject: Re: [EM] Proportional multi-winner ranked voting methods - guidelines?

From: "Toby Pereira" <***@yahoo.co.uk>

Date: Thu, February 23, 2017 5:09 pm

To: "***@audioimagination.com" <***@audioimagination.com>

"election-***@lists.electorama.com" <election-***@lists.electorama.com>

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Post by Toby Pereira
I suppose it depends what you want from a multi-winner election. A faction of 51% could command all the seats if you did it that way.

yes, i know that. but, OTHER THAN GEOGRAPHIC division of the constituency into groups (we might call those divisions "districts" or "wards"), i can't see how a government can legitimately divide the constituency into groups based on race or ethnicity or
gender-preference identity, just to get proportional representation. we can't have folks in Greenwich Village registering as gay or straight so that the gays get their allotted proportion and the straights getting their proportion.
the alternative is that we elect someone to office even
though *more* of us voters explicitly mark our ballots that we prefer someone else. that's the whole point behind Condorcet compliance.

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------

Subject: Re: [EM] Proportional multi-winner ranked voting methods - guidelines?

From: "Kristofer Munsterhjelm" <***@t-online.de>

Date: Thu, February 23, 2017 5:20 pm

To: ***@audioimagination.com

"election-***@lists.electorama.com" <election-***@lists.electorama.com>

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Post by Toby Pereira

yes, i know. i just think, in reality (despite what i know about the Chittenden Senate District in the state of Vermont) that with D and E on the edge (and maybe even C and F), that there would be probablistic influences on the
vote that might elect people from the slightly smaller group.
the Chittenden Senate District of the state senate of Vermont is, AFAIK the largest (most seats) legislative district in the United States. the district elects six candidates (the six biggest vote-getters in a mark-up-to-six
race) and, in the past, many people voted with bullet voting. this was because there was *one* Republican (she is the daughter of a former governor who happen to die while in office that that was the beginning of Howard Dean's gubernatorial term) that was well-liked and perceived to be
guaranteed election. then the six Democrats (or Dem/Progs) on the ticket were literally running against each other in a sorta musical chairs because one of them wasn't gonna get elected. but Ms. Snelling was appointed to some administrative position and is not on the ticket anymore and
the Dems (or Dem/Progs) have locked out the GOP from that senate district and the GOP really want to slice up that district (after the next census) and i don't blame them. proportionately, they should get at least one seat and there is likely a portion of Chittenden County that would elect a
GOP state senator. now the Dems don't bullet vote because their incentive is different. rather than try to elect the particular candidate they really want, they'll just vote for the whole slate of six candidates because there is no longer this remaining GOP shoe-in candidate that we used
to have.
even though many of us are a bunch of hippies and Vermont is the bluest (or second bluest) state in the U.S., we have our goofy electoral dynamics in the state (which includes having the most successful third party in U.S., in terms of getting people elected) and this mondo 6-senator
district is a little goofy. i call it a "cluster fuck".

Post by Toby Pereira
A more proportional Condorcet method could be accomplished this way -- I
think that would be the most simple somewhat proportional Condorcet
- Randomly divide the voters into n groups
- Order the groups in random order.
- Determine the first group's winner according to the Condorcet method.
- Give the first seat to this winner and eliminate him from every
ballot (of every group).
- Determine the second group's winner, elect, and eliminate.
- Do so until you have n candidate assignments.
* Choose the assembly that you saw most often.
In the 51/49 example above, it's basically a coin toss as to whether any
given group will elect one of {A,B,C,D} or one of {E,F,G,H}, and so you
get a 50-50 split.

this is cool. but the problem is in the lack of determinism (this "randomly" do anything will cause objection with some).
is there a totally deterministic way to come up with these ensemble averages to get a good estimate of the proportional
representation? like the outcome should be that A, B, E, and F are winners if there are four seats in this multi-winner election. (and the simpler, the better. the only way i can think of is to geographically subdivide the district into smaller and smaller into atomic communities or
"microcosms".)

--
r b-j ***@audioimagination.com
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

Kristofer Munsterhjelm

2017-06-02 07:32:11 UTC

Permalink

Post by robert bristow-johnson
---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Re: [EM] Proportional multi-winner ranked voting methods - guidelines?
Date: Thu, February 23, 2017 5:09 pm
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Post by Toby Pereira
I suppose it depends what you want from a multi-winner election. A

faction of 51% could command all the seats if you did it that way.
yes, i know that. but, OTHER THAN GEOGRAPHIC division of the
constituency into groups (we might call those divisions "districts" or
"wards"), i can't see how a government can legitimately divide the
constituency into groups based on race or ethnicity or gender-preference
identity, just to get proportional representation. we can't have folks
in Greenwich Village registering as gay or straight so that the gays get
their allotted proportion and the straights getting their proportion.
the alternative is that we elect someone to office even though *more* of
us voters explicitly mark our ballots that we prefer someone else.
that's the whole point behind Condorcet compliance.
---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Re: [EM] Proportional multi-winner ranked voting methods - guidelines?
Date: Thu, February 23, 2017 5:20 pm
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

this is cool. but the problem is in the lack of determinism (this
"randomly" do anything will cause objection with some).
is there a totally deterministic way to come up with these ensemble
averages to get a good estimate of the proportional representation?
like the outcome should be that A, B, E, and F are winners if there are
four seats in this multi-winner election. (and the simpler, the better.
the only way i can think of is to geographically subdivide the district
into smaller and smaller into atomic communities or "microcosms".)

You could in theory integrate out the randomness, basically just
mathematically find out what would happen if you could do it an infinite
number of times. But that tends to make the algorithm a lot hairier, and
then we might just be back to "what does this even do" levels of
complexity for most voters.

Random methods can be very simple. Sortition is really powerful for its
simplicity, for instance. So I guess the question would be, what would
hinder the adoption of a proportional Condorcet method the most:
complexity, or randomness?
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VoteFair

2017-02-27 05:44:38 UTC

Permalink

In VoteFair ranking, the first seat in a district is won by the winner
according to the Condorcet-Kemeny method. The winner of the second seat
in the same district is determined by first proportionally reducing the
influence of the voters who are already well-represented by the first
winner, and then with the remaining preferences, calculating the
Condorcet-Kemeny winner.

So, yes, those results are Condorcet compliant. Obviously those results
alone do not assure proportional results.

For the proportional part of the results, some "nationwide" seats in
parliament (or the legislature) are reserved for proportionality
adjustments. The criteria for winning them is not mathematically
sophisticated (because it involves comparing the popularity of
candidates who were not in the same race), so I doubt that the result
meets any sophisticated proportionality criterion. And I doubt that the
results meet Droop proportionality because that calculation method is
quite different.

With VoteFair ranking, a greater number of nationwide seats increases
proportionality, but that reduces the number of seats filled by the
carefully selected -- Condorcet-compliant -- district-based winners.
It's a balance that needs to be adjusted according to the needs of the
nation using it.

As a clarification, VoteFair ranking does not attempt to achieve fully
proportional results for every political party.

Instead it attempts to ensure that the majority of elected MPs (members
of parliament) best represent the majority of voters, keeping in mind
that political parties are often not really representative of voters.

This concept relates to what's currently going on in U.S. politics.
Most U.S. voters are not well-represented by either the Republican party
or the Democratic party. In particular, if fair methods of voting were
used here, none of the candidates who were in the primary elections
would have won those primary elections.

Expressed another way, voters want problem-solving leaders, but unfair
election methods give us special-interest puppets.

Richard Fobes
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Richard Lung

2017-02-24 13:36:15 UTC

Permalink

Richard Fobes is saying that the STV glass is not half full, it is half
empty. He is right sort of. But not that right! The proof of the
pudding is in the eating, as shown by the examples given by James
Gilmour. STV returning officers have long known that they take
short-cuts with the manual count, that are not strictly logical, but
keep the procedure manageable.

Gilmour advised the BC Citizens Assembly on the more sound version of
the Gregory method of transferable voting.
Essentially, proportional surplus transfer is a standard method in
statistics, known as weighting in arithmetic proportion. If transferable
voting is extremely flawed then so is basic statistics.
One has to keep things in proportion.

(Borda method is essentially what statisticians call weighting in
arithmetic [series, or geometric series or harmonic series] progression,
which they use as an estimate of the relative importance of categories
of data, when they do not possess actual information of their weights,
in proportion to each other.)

From
Richard Lung

Post by VoteFair

Don't understand your remark about STV ...
... for a single national constituency.
...
The HG Wells formula is "Proportional representation by the single
transferable vote in large constituencies."

Although the designers think that they designed STV to handle a full
national legislature/parliament, the method has the same flaw as
instant-runoff voting (IRV), namely the method looks at each voter's
currently top choice (after any candidate eliminations), and that
approach -- of assuming the candidate with the most such "votes" is
the most popular (or the inverse, assuming that the candidate with the
fewest such votes is least popular) -- is extremely flawed.
In other words, STV is like using single-mark ballots, except that
when a voter's marked candidate is eliminated, then the voter
automatically supplies an alternate single-mark ballot.
In spite of that major unfairness/flaw, STV would provide reasonably
acceptable results if only two seats were being filled. And if a
nation has 3 equally dominant political parties, then filling 3 seats
for each district would work.
However, as I stated before, STV would not provide fair results if it
were used for a full national legislature.
Recently, in Canada, some people have been promoting the idea of using
STV to elect about 5 MPs (members of parliament) from each district
(which they call a "riding"). That would produce very unfair results!
That's what I had in mind when I referred to using STV repeatedly.
Although Schulze-STV uses pairwise counting, it still has the same
flaw that it would not provide overall proportional results if it were
used repeatedly to fill more than 2 (or maybe 3) seats in each
district. And this method, and similar methods, would also provide
flawed results if it were used to fill all the seats in a national
legislature (and those reasons are explained in my book).
So, OK, I was not clear about the meaning of the word "designed." I
was referring to the effect of the design rather than the intention of
the design.
Richard Fobes

Don't understand your remark about STV, the name given by Thomas Hare,
who invented it for a single national constituency. (Tho Mill was
prepared to be flexible about this, when he moved "Mr Hare's system" of
Personal Representation in parliament.
The HG Wells formula is "Proportional representation by the single
transferable vote in large constituencies."
Agree with you about preference voting essential for fairness. Do you
have any good source for your assertion that the lack of it in European
party-proportional methods makes them especially vulnerable to moneied
influence?
You could say the same, for instance about the nuclear lobby in Britain
(tho not Scotland).
from Richard Lung.

Post by VoteFair

Post by Armando
...
I am looking for multi-winner election with fair proportional representation.
...
I would very appreciate if you can help me giving guidelines,
explaining pros and cons, advising further readings. ...

Markus Schulze

2017-02-22 08:36:40 UTC

Permalink

Hallo,

it is difficult to compare Schulze STV and Tideman's CPO-STV,
because there are too few established criteria for STV methods.
However, Schulze STV has the property that, when there is some
candidate X who wins in every (S+1)-candidate contest (where
S is the number of seats), then this candidate X is also a
winner overall.

Markus Schulze

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Stéphane Rouillon

2017-02-22 19:54:56 UTC

Permalink

Hello Armando,

If you search for an already applied method, STV is what I would recommend. If you want a different approach without geographical representation, or with a regional representation:
http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/1/9/9/3/9/p199397_index.html

http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/1/9/9/3/9/pages199397/p199397-1.php

http://www.parl.gc.ca/Content/HOC/Committee/421/ERRE/Brief/BR8583060/br-external/RouillonStephane-9477862-e.pdf

--
StÃ©phane Rouillon

EnvoyÃ© de mon iPhone

Armando

2017-05-22 02:10:09 UTC

Permalink

I want to thank you everybody for your useful and attentive comments, although I remained silent I read everything. I’m glad to have found this mailing list, very interesting discussions.
In these months I continued discussing about these themes in my organization.
After reading your reflections, actually I think that any proportional multi-winner Condorcet (different from traditional STV) in very large magnitude constituencies (more similar too original Hare idea) should not be affected by the various problems you mentioned and satisfy my original question. Soon I’ll send you some more questions, since you are so kind.

Meanwhile I’ll be thankful for any advice of further readings if you have.
Best regards,
Armando Pitocco

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VoteFair

2017-05-22 18:18:18 UTC

Permalink

Post by Armando
I want to thank you everybody for your useful and attentive comments,
although I remained silent I read everything. I’m glad to have found
this mailing list, very interesting discussions.

Thank you for letting us know that our answers were useful.

Post by Armando
In these months I continued discussing about these themes in my organization.

Thank you for spreading useful voting knowledge.

Post by Armando
After reading your reflections, actually I think that any
proportional multi-winner Condorcet (different from traditional STV)
in very large magnitude constituencies (more similar too original
Hare idea) should not be affected by the various problems you
mentioned and satisfy my original question. Soon I’ll send you
some more questions, since you are so kind.

Based on your current thinking it's clear -- to me -- that you
understand what we wrote.

Post by Armando
Meanwhile I’ll be thankful for any advice of further readings if you have.

You, and we, are exploring frontier territory, so there's not a lot of
formal writing about "proportional multi-winner Condorcet" methods
beyond what we've told you about.

If you, or anyone, has specific questions about what I wrote regarding
this topic in "Ending The Hidden Unfairness In U.S. Elections", just ask.

Richard Fobes

Post by Armando
Best regards,
Armando Pitocco

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Armando

2017-05-23 00:44:04 UTC

Permalink

Dear Richard Forbes,
a special thank to you for your ready answers. Actually I already met your website years ago, and I found it one of the most fascinating tool for internet voting.
I’m not an expert, so I’m not sure to have well understood, correct me if I mistake:
your systems seems to fit specially context like USA, where traditionally the relationship within the constituencies and their representatives is harder than in non-anglosaxon countries. It seems that they are the best solution for countries who don’t prioritize proportionality, who look for local representation, but however want some pluralism.
Since in my view and for my needs my priorities are perfect proportionality and political representation (instead of local representation), so nation-wide district are not a problem, I’m correct in believing that your systems don’t fit to me more than a proportional condorcet?

Thank you again

Post by VoteFair

Thank you for letting us know that our answers were useful.

Post by Armando
In these months I continued discussing about these themes in my organization.

Thank you for spreading useful voting knowledge.

Based on your current thinking it's clear -- to me -- that you understand what we wrote.

Post by Armando
Meanwhile I’ll be thankful for any advice of further readings if you have.

You, and we, are exploring frontier territory, so there's not a lot of formal writing about "proportional multi-winner Condorcet" methods beyond what we've told you about.
If you, or anyone, has specific questions about what I wrote regarding this topic in "Ending The Hidden Unfairness In U.S. Elections", just ask.
Richard Fobes

Post by Armando
Best regards,
Armando Pitocco

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VoteFair

2017-05-23 18:07:46 UTC

Permalink

Actually VoteFair ranking would work quite well for electing members to
the Norwegian parliament, or any other parliament/legislature where
highly proportional results are important. Doing so simply involves
choosing the right numbers.

Specifically, for the case of Norway where there are 19 districts
("constituencies"), and which has a unicameral (rather than bicameral)
parliament, I suggest:

Category 1: Each district ("constituency") would elect 4 members using
VoteFair representation ranking. Typically the two dominant parties in
that district would win 2 seats each. (If a nation had lots of
districts or states, then only two members would be elected this way.)

Category 2: Each district would also elect an additional 1 or 2 members
using VoteFair "districtwide" partial-proportional ranking (using only
the ballots in that district). Typically these seats would be won by
members of that district's non-dominant parties.

Category 3: An additional 30 (or 20 or 40 or whatever) seats would be
elected using VoteFair "nationwide" partial-proportional ranking (using
all the ballots across the nation). Although this method includes the
word "partial" in its name, the method becomes fully proportional simply
by choosing to use this method for lots of seats. These seats would be
won by whichever parties did not win "enough" seats at the district level.

Yes, as explained in "Ending The Hidden Unfairness In U.S. Elections"
for use in the United States there would be only a few (of what I'm
calling here) Category 3 seats. That's because in the U.S.
proportionality by state is as important as proportionality by political
party. That's also why I included the word "partial" in the name
VoteFair partial-proportional ranking, namely because in the U.S. case
it does not cover enough seats to ensure full party-based proportionality.

Getting back to the case of Norway, or elsewhere where party
proportionality is more important than location proportionality, simply
filling lots of nationwide seats using VoteFair partial-proportional
ranking achieves a high degree of proportionality.

As part of this suggestion, VoteFair party ranking would also be used.
It eliminates the need to set a quota for the minimum percentage of
votes needed (by a very minor party) to win a single seat. Of course
only a voter's top-ranked party would be used for the proportionality
calculations. (The full ranking would be used to limit how many
candidates each party can offer in that district's election.)

Most importantly, VoteFair ranking elects the entire parliament without
allowing political-party leaders to choose which candidates fill that
party's seats. Why is this important? It allows the voters to control
the parties. This greatly reduces the corruption that inevitably occurs
when insiders have control of which candidates win that party's seats.

As a reminder, VoteFair ranking eliminates the need to ask candidates to
choose which kind of seat they are competing for. Every candidate is
competing for the Category 1 seats, but they have an opportunity to win
a Category 2 seat in their district if their party is medium-popular in
that district. And every candidate who fails to win a Category 1 or 2
seat has another chance to win a Category 3 seat if the candidate is
popular in his/her district and is in a party that failed to win enough
of the Category 1 and 2 seats.

The situation in the United States is quite complex, which is why it was
challenging to design VoteFair ranking to meet the needs here. In
contrast, smaller nations -- that have only a few big metropolitan areas
(instead of hundreds as in the U.S.) -- can use a simplified version of
VoteFair ranking.

Thank you for asking for clarification instead of just assuming that
VoteFair ranking is only suitable for use in the U.S.

And thank you for asking questions because I'm sure that lots of other
readers have the same (or equivalent) questions.

Richard Fobes

Post by Armando
Dear Richard Forbes,
a special thank to you for your ready answers. Actually I already met your website years ago, and I found it one of the most fascinating tool for internet voting.
your systems seems to fit specially context like USA, where traditionally the relationship within the constituencies and their representatives is harder than in non-anglosaxon countries. It seems that they are the best solution for countries who don’t prioritize proportionality, who look for local representation, but however want some pluralism.
Since in my view and for my needs my priorities are perfect proportionality and political representation (instead of local representation), so nation-wide district are not a problem, I’m correct in believing that your systems don’t fit to me more than a proportional condorcet?
Thank you again

Post by VoteFair

Thank you for letting us know that our answers were useful.

Post by Armando
In these months I continued discussing about these themes in my organization.

Thank you for spreading useful voting knowledge.

Based on your current thinking it's clear -- to me -- that you understand what we wrote.

Post by Armando
Meanwhile I’ll be thankful for any advice of further readings if you have.

You, and we, are exploring frontier territory, so there's not a lot of formal writing about "proportional multi-winner Condorcet" methods beyond what we've told you about.
If you, or anyone, has specific questions about what I wrote regarding this topic in "Ending The Hidden Unfairness In U.S. Elections", just ask.
Richard Fobes

Post by Armando
Best regards,
Armando Pitocco

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Kristofer Munsterhjelm

2017-06-02 07:23:20 UTC

Permalink

Post by VoteFair

Post by Armando
Meanwhile I’ll be thankful for any advice of further readings if you have.

You, and we, are exploring frontier territory, so there's not a lot of
formal writing about "proportional multi-winner Condorcet" methods
beyond what we've told you about.
If you, or anyone, has specific questions about what I wrote regarding
this topic in "Ending The Hidden Unfairness In U.S. Elections", just ask.

It's not even all that clear what "proportional multi-winner Condorcet"
means, independent of actual implementations. The lower bar is "reduces
to Condorcet when there's only one winner", but how could we generalize
Condorcet beyond that point? Hard to tell.
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VoteFair

2017-06-04 04:55:24 UTC

Permalink

Yes, "proportional multi-winner Condorcet" has no clear, unambiguous
meaning beyond the criteria for identifying the winner of the first seat.

In the case of the full VoteFair ranking system, VoteFair popularity
ranking -- which is mathematically equivalent to the Condorcet-Kemeny
method -- is used to identify the most popular candidate (or party)
after calculating the "remaining" influence of each ballot. It produces
results that are as proportional as desired. Consequently it qualifies
as a "proportional multi-winner Condorcet" method.

After I published the VoteFair ranking system, Markus Schulze published
his "Schulze STV" method, which also fits within the "proportional
multi-winner Condorcet" category.

Are there any other such methods?

Richard Fobes

Post by Kristofer Munsterhjelm

Post by VoteFair

Post by Armando
Meanwhile I’ll be thankful for any advice of further readings if you have.

You, and we, are exploring frontier territory, so there's not a lot of
formal writing about "proportional multi-winner Condorcet" methods
beyond what we've told you about.
If you, or anyone, has specific questions about what I wrote regarding
this topic in "Ending The Hidden Unfairness In U.S. Elections", just ask.

----
Election-Methods mailing list - see http:

Juho Laatu

2017-06-04 08:07:27 UTC

Permalink

Yes, "proportional multi-winner Condorcet" has no clear, unambiguous meaning beyond the criteria for identifying the winner of the first seat.

Yes, it is not easy to say which methods should fall in the "proportional multi-winner Condorcet" category. I also note that even if it would be a requirement that the first seat shall go to the Condorcet winner, if one exists, it is quite possible that the Condorcet winner would not be elected if there are two seats. (e.g. when there are two big parties, left and right, and one small centrist party with a Condorcet winner)

Juho

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Kristofer Munsterhjelm

2017-06-04 08:18:12 UTC

Permalink

Post by Juho Laatu

Post by VoteFair
Yes, "proportional multi-winner Condorcet" has no clear,
unambiguous meaning beyond the criteria for identifying the winner
of the first seat.

Yes, it is not easy to say which methods should fall in the
"proportional multi-winner Condorcet" category. I also note that even
if it would be a requirement that the first seat shall go to the
Condorcet winner, if one exists, it is quite possible that the
Condorcet winner would not be elected if there are two seats. (e.g.
when there are two big parties, left and right, and one small
centrist party with a Condorcet winner)

The LCR example is a concrete example that giving the first seat to the
CW makes the method fail Droop proportionality. E.g.

43: L>C>R
41: R>C>L
6: C>L>R

number of voters = 90, Droop quota for two seats = 30, so both L and R
should be elected, but C is the CW.

For larger assemblies, it might still be a good idea to give a few of
the seats to winners chosen by a multiwinner method with few seats, or a
single-winner method. Doing so would make centrists the kingmakers in a
kingmaker scenario, rather than minor parties on one wing.
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Juho Laatu

2017-06-04 08:42:23 UTC

Permalink

Post by Juho Laatu

Post by VoteFair
Yes, "proportional multi-winner Condorcet" has no clear,
unambiguous meaning beyond the criteria for identifying the winner
of the first seat.

Yes, it is not easy to say which methods should fall in the
"proportional multi-winner Condorcet" category. I also note that even
if it would be a requirement that the first seat shall go to the
Condorcet winner, if one exists, it is quite possible that the
Condorcet winner would not be elected if there are two seats. (e.g.
when there are two big parties, left and right, and one small
centrist party with a Condorcet winner)

The LCR example is a concrete example that giving the first seat to the CW makes the method fail Droop proportionality. E.g.
43: L>C>R
41: R>C>L
6: C>L>R
number of voters = 90, Droop quota for two seats = 30, so both L and R should be elected, but C is the CW.
For larger assemblies, it might still be a good idea to give a few of the seats to winners chosen by a multiwinner method with few seats, or a single-winner method. Doing so would make centrists the kingmakers in a kingmaker scenario, rather than minor parties on one wing.

I guess we need to decide if we want to violate proportionality or seat monotonicity (if we respect the "first seat to the Condorcet winner" principle). Since the name of the category ("proportional multi-winner Condorcet") includes word "proportional", maybe in this case it is a smaller problem to violate seat monotonicity.

The problems may continue (with smaller probability) in larger assemblies. When the number of seats grows, in LCR examples (with a very small C party) we might elect first {C1}, then {L1, R1}, {L1, C1, R1}, {L1, L2, R1, R2}, {L1, L2, C1, R1, R2}, and eventually {L1, ... , L49, C1, R1, ... , L49}. If L and R have exactly the same number of votes, we may need to elect C1 when the number of seats is odd, no matter how small C party is. C1 will be a kingmaker if we have an odd number of seats, i.e. quite randomly.

Juho

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VoteFair

2017-06-04 17:26:54 UTC

Permalink

Post by Kristofer Munsterhjelm
...
The LCR example is a concrete example that giving the
first seat to the CW makes the method fail Droop
proportionality.

I do not regard Droop proportionality as an important criteria to meet.
It is based on looking at each ballot one candidate at a time, right?

Looking at one candidate at a time is what instant-runoff voting does,
and we know how unfair that can be.

Richard Fobes

Post by Kristofer Munsterhjelm

Post by Juho Laatu

Post by VoteFair
Yes, "proportional multi-winner Condorcet" has no clear,
unambiguous meaning beyond the criteria for identifying the winner
of the first seat.

Yes, it is not easy to say which methods should fall in the
"proportional multi-winner Condorcet" category. I also note that even
if it would be a requirement that the first seat shall go to the
Condorcet winner, if one exists, it is quite possible that the
Condorcet winner would not be elected if there are two seats. (e.g.
when there are two big parties, left and right, and one small
centrist party with a Condorcet winner)

The LCR example is a concrete example that giving the first seat to the
CW makes the method fail Droop proportionality. E.g.
43: L>C>R
41: R>C>L
6: C>L>R
number of voters = 90, Droop quota for two seats = 30, so both L and R
should be elected, but C is the CW.
For larger assemblies, it might still be a good idea to give a few of
the seats to winners chosen by a multiwinner method with few seats, or a
single-winner method. Doing so would make centrists the kingmakers in a
kingmaker scenario, rather than minor parties on one wing.
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Toby Pereira

2017-06-04 17:43:04 UTC

Permalink

People often talk about Droop proportionality but proportionality for solid coalitions can be Droop or Hare. IfÂ a ranked systemÂ meets neither, it probably isn't proportional as most people would define it.

From: VoteFair <***@votefair.org>
To: election-***@lists.electorama.com
Sent: Sunday, 4 June 2017, 18:27
Subject: Re: [EM] Resume: Proportional multi-winner ranked voting methods - guidelines?

Post by Kristofer Munsterhjelm
...
The LCR example is a concrete example that giving the
first seat to the CW makes the method fail Droop
proportionality.

Toby Pereira

2017-06-05 09:03:34 UTC

Permalink

Although, come to think of it, I think we discussed this before, and you said that that full proportionality for every party is not what you're after - http://election-methods.5485.n7.nabble.com/EM-Proportional-multi-winner-ranked-voting-methods-guidelines-tc34205.html#a34225

From: Toby Pereira <***@yahoo.co.uk>
To: VoteFair <***@votefair.org>; "election-***@lists.electorama.com" <election-***@lists.electorama.com>
Sent: Sunday, 4 June 2017, 18:43
Subject: Re: [EM] Resume: Proportional multi-winner ranked voting methods - guidelines?

People often talk about Droop proportionality but proportionality for solid coalitions can be Droop or Hare. IfÂ a ranked systemÂ meets neither, it probably isn't proportional as most people would define it.

From: VoteFair <***@votefair.org>
To: election-***@lists.electorama.com
Sent: Sunday, 4 June 2017, 18:27
Subject: Re: [EM] Resume: Proportional multi-winner ranked voting methods - guidelines?

Post by Kristofer Munsterhjelm
...
The LCR example is a concrete example that giving the
first seat to the CW makes the method fail Droop
proportionality.

Kristofer Munsterhjelm

2017-06-04 20:48:20 UTC

Permalink

Post by VoteFair

Post by Kristofer Munsterhjelm
...
The LCR example is a concrete example that giving the
first seat to the CW makes the method fail Droop
proportionality.

I do not regard Droop proportionality as an important criteria to meet.
It is based on looking at each ballot one candidate at a time, right?

Not necessarily. It's a multiwinner generalization of mutual majority.

Mutual majority says: If there's a set of candidates that a majority
ranks ahead of everybody else (but not necessarily in the same order),
then someone from that set should win.

Droop proportionality says: If there's a set of k candidates, and at
least p Droop quotas worth rank all of these ahead of everybody else
(but not necessarily in the same order), then min(k, p) of those should win.

STV passes Droop proportionality just like IRV passes mutual majority.
But Droop proportionality doesn't imply STV (as in the IRV-like method)
more than mutual majority implies IRV. Most Condorcet methods also pass
mutual majority, as electing from the Smith set implies the criterion.

There may be a bit of confusion because methods that pass Droop
proportionality are sometimes called STV methods, e.g. as in Schulze STV.

Perhaps Droop proportionality isn't the exact proportionality measure
one would want - for instance, for my Bucklin methods, I've tried to
base them on divisor methods rather than on hard quotas - but I think
the concept that "some voters who broadly agree on a group of candidates
should see one of them elected" is a good one. That is, that a group of
voters can have "their" seat without having to agree on a strategy.
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Toby Pereira

2017-06-05 17:09:38 UTC

Permalink

As I was saying before, while Droop proportionality has gained a lot of currency as a criterion, it's just a special case of proportionality for solid coalitions. We could just as easily talk about Hare proportionality. For example, the Sainte-LaguÃ« party list method doesn't obey Droop proportionality, but is seen as more mathematically proportional than D'Hondt, which does obey it. But Sainte-LaguÃ« does obey proportionality for solid coalitions more generally. The point is that Droop proportionality itself is not a deal breaker for a method, and I find it slightly overused.

From: Kristofer Munsterhjelm <***@t-online.de>
Â

Perhaps Droop proportionality isn't the exact proportionality measure
one would want - for instance, for my Bucklin methods, I've tried to
base them on divisor methods rather than on hard quotas - but I think
the concept that "some voters who broadly agree on a group of candidates
should see one of them elected" is a good one. That is, that a group of
voters can have "their" seat without having to agree on a strategy.

Toby Pereira

2017-06-05 17:19:50 UTC

Permalink

By the way, a sensible Hare version of proportionality for solid coalitions would be that for a faction to be guaranteed s seats, then they should need s - 0.5 Hare quotas (or just over), rather than s Hare quotas. In the single-winner case, this would translate to 50% of the vote. This is what Sainte-LaguÃ« guarantees.

From: Toby Pereira <***@yahoo.co.uk>
To: Kristofer Munsterhjelm <***@t-online.de>; VoteFair <***@votefair.org>; "election-***@lists.electorama.com" <election-***@lists.electorama.com>
Sent: Monday, 5 June 2017, 18:09
Subject: Re: [EM] Resume: Proportional multi-winner ranked voting methods - guidelines?

As I was saying before, while Droop proportionality has gained a lot of currency as a criterion, it's just a special case of proportionality for solid coalitions. We could just as easily talk about Hare proportionality. For example, the Sainte-LaguÃ« party list method doesn't obey Droop proportionality, but is seen as more mathematically proportional than D'Hondt, which does obey it. But Sainte-LaguÃ« does obey proportionality for solid coalitions more generally. The point is that Droop proportionality itself is not a deal breaker for a method, and I find it slightly overused.

From: Kristofer Munsterhjelm <***@t-online.de>
Â

Perhaps Droop proportionality isn't the exact proportionality measure
one would want - for instance, for my Bucklin methods, I've tried to
base them on divisor methods rather than on hard quotas - but I think
the concept that "some voters who broadly agree on a group of candidates
should see one of them elected" is a good one. That is, that a group of
voters can have "their" seat without having to agree on a strategy.

Toby Pereira

2017-06-05 17:23:52 UTC

Permalink

I think that's wrong actually. Forget that last post!

From: Toby Pereira <***@yahoo.co.uk>
To: Kristofer Munsterhjelm <***@t-online.de>; VoteFair <***@votefair.org>; "election-***@lists.electorama.com" <election-***@lists.electorama.com>
Sent: Monday, 5 June 2017, 18:19
Subject: Re: [EM] Resume: Proportional multi-winner ranked voting methods - guidelines?

By the way, a sensible Hare version of proportionality for solid coalitions would be that for a faction to be guaranteed s seats, then they should need s - 0.5 Hare quotas (or just over), rather than s Hare quotas. In the single-winner case, this would translate to 50% of the vote. This is what Sainte-LaguÃ« guarantees.

From: Toby Pereira <***@yahoo.co.uk>
To: Kristofer Munsterhjelm <***@t-online.de>; VoteFair <***@votefair.org>; "election-***@lists.electorama.com" <election-***@lists.electorama.com>
Sent: Monday, 5 June 2017, 18:09
Subject: Re: [EM] Resume: Proportional multi-winner ranked voting methods - guidelines?

As I was saying before, while Droop proportionality has gained a lot of currency as a criterion, it's just a special case of proportionality for solid coalitions. We could just as easily talk about Hare proportionality. For example, the Sainte-LaguÃ« party list method doesn't obey Droop proportionality, but is seen as more mathematically proportional than D'Hondt, which does obey it. But Sainte-LaguÃ« does obey proportionality for solid coalitions more generally. The point is that Droop proportionality itself is not a deal breaker for a method, and I find it slightly overused.

From: Kristofer Munsterhjelm <***@t-online.de>
Â

Perhaps Droop proportionality isn't the exact proportionality measure
one would want - for instance, for my Bucklin methods, I've tried to
base them on divisor methods rather than on hard quotas - but I think
the concept that "some voters who broadly agree on a group of candidates
should see one of them elected" is a good one. That is, that a group of
voters can have "their" seat without having to agree on a strategy.

Toby Pereira

2017-06-06 10:43:22 UTC

Permalink

Just to finish the thought on this, under Sainte-LaguÃ«/Hare proportionalityÂ , for a party/faction to guarantee themselves sÂ seats, then I think they would need s-1 Hare quotas and then a Droop quota forÂ their lastÂ seat, but it would be a Droop quota considering only the remaining seats and voters rather than all of them.
For example, let's say there are five seats.
To guarantee one seat, a party would need 0 Hare quotas and one Droop, so 1/6 of the total vote.
To guarantee two seats, a party would need 1 Hare quota and one Droop quota of four seats, so 1/5 + 4/5*1/5 = 9/25 or 0.36 of the vote
To guarantee three seats, they would need 2 Hare quotas and one Droop quota of three seats, so 2/5 + 3/5*1/4 = 11/20 or 0.55 of the vote.
To guarantee four seats, they'd need 3 Hare quotas and one Droop of two seats, so 3/5 + 2/5*1/3 = 11/15 or 0.73 of the vote.
To guarantee five seats, they'd need 4 Hare quotas and one Droop of one seats, so 4/5 + 1/5*1/2 = 9/10 = 0.9 of the vote.
I think this is correct now. According to the Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportionality_for_Solid_CoalitionsÂ the Hare version of proportionality for solid coalitions requires a full Hare quota for each seat, but I think this is a more sophisticated definition.

From: Toby Pereira <***@yahoo.co.uk>
To: Kristofer Munsterhjelm <***@t-online.de>; VoteFair <***@votefair.org>; "election-***@lists.electorama.com" <election-***@lists.electorama.com>
Sent: Monday, 5 June 2017, 18:23
Subject: Re: [EM] Resume: Proportional multi-winner ranked voting methods - guidelines?

I think that's wrong actually. Forget that last post!

From: Toby Pereira <***@yahoo.co.uk>
To: Kristofer Munsterhjelm <***@t-online.de>; VoteFair <***@votefair.org>; "election-***@lists.electorama.com" <election-***@lists.electorama.com>
Sent: Monday, 5 June 2017, 18:19
Subject: Re: [EM] Resume: Proportional multi-winner ranked voting methods - guidelines?

By the way, a sensible Hare version of proportionality for solid coalitions would be that for a faction to be guaranteed s seats, then they should need s - 0.5 Hare quotas (or just over), rather than s Hare quotas. In the single-winner case, this would translate to 50% of the vote. This is what Sainte-LaguÃ« guarantees.

From: Toby Pereira <***@yahoo.co.uk>
To: Kristofer Munsterhjelm <***@t-online.de>; VoteFair <***@votefair.org>; "election-***@lists.electorama.com" <election-***@lists.electorama.com>
Sent: Monday, 5 June 2017, 18:09
Subject: Re: [EM] Resume: Proportional multi-winner ranked voting methods - guidelines?

As I was saying before, while Droop proportionality has gained a lot of currency as a criterion, it's just a special case of proportionality for solid coalitions. We could just as easily talk about Hare proportionality. For example, the Sainte-LaguÃ« party list method doesn't obey Droop proportionality, but is seen as more mathematically proportional than D'Hondt, which does obey it. But Sainte-LaguÃ« does obey proportionality for solid coalitions more generally. The point is that Droop proportionality itself is not a deal breaker for a method, and I find it slightly overused.

From: Kristofer Munsterhjelm <***@t-online.de>
Â

Perhaps Droop proportionality isn't the exact proportionality measure
one would want - for instance, for my Bucklin methods, I've tried to
base them on divisor methods rather than on hard quotas - but I think
the concept that "some voters who broadly agree on a group of candidates
should see one of them elected" is a good one. That is, that a group of
voters can have "their" seat without having to agree on a strategy.

Richard Lung

2017-06-09 20:55:13 UTC

Permalink

I introduced a Harmonic Mean quota as the happy medium of the Hare and
Droop quotas, because both have democratic deficiencies. It is explained
in my book Scientific Method of Elections, as is my generalisation of
STV: Binomial STV (free from Smashwords and in the pdf Archive).

from
Richard Lung.

Just to finish the thought on this, under Sainte-Laguë/Hare
proportionality , for a party/faction to guarantee themselves s seats,
then I think they would need s-1 Hare quotas and then a Droop quota
for their last seat, but it would be a Droop quota considering only
the remaining seats and voters rather than all of them.
For example, let's say there are five seats.
To guarantee one seat, a party would need 0 Hare quotas and one Droop,
so 1/6 of the total vote.
To guarantee two seats, a party would need 1 Hare quota and one Droop
quota of four seats, so 1/5 + 4/5*1/5 = 9/25 or 0.36 of the vote
To guarantee three seats, they would need 2 Hare quotas and one Droop
quota of three seats, so 2/5 + 3/5*1/4 = 11/20 or 0.55 of the vote.
To guarantee four seats, they'd need 3 Hare quotas and one Droop of
two seats, so 3/5 + 2/5*1/3 = 11/15 or 0.73 of the vote.
To guarantee five seats, they'd need 4 Hare quotas and one Droop of
one seats, so 4/5 + 1/5*1/2 = 9/10 = 0.9 of the vote.
I think this is correct now. According to the Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportionality_for_Solid_Coalitions the
Hare version of proportionality for solid coalitions requires a full
Hare quota for each seat, but I think this is a more sophisticated
definition.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Sent:* Monday, 5 June 2017, 18:23
*Subject:* Re: [EM] Resume: Proportional multi-winner ranked voting
methods - guidelines?
I think that's wrong actually. Forget that last post!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Sent:* Monday, 5 June 2017, 18:19
*Subject:* Re: [EM] Resume: Proportional multi-winner ranked voting
methods - guidelines?
By the way, a sensible Hare version of proportionality for solid
coalitions would be that for a faction to be guaranteed s seats, then
they should need s - 0.5 Hare quotas (or just over), rather than s
Hare quotas. In the single-winner case, this would translate to 50% of
the vote. This is what Sainte-Laguë guarantees.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Sent:* Monday, 5 June 2017, 18:09
*Subject:* Re: [EM] Resume: Proportional multi-winner ranked voting
methods - guidelines?
As I was saying before, while Droop proportionality has gained a lot
of currency as a criterion, it's just a special case of
proportionality for solid coalitions. We could just as easily talk
about Hare proportionality. For example, the Sainte-Laguë party list
method doesn't obey Droop proportionality, but is seen as more
mathematically proportional than D'Hondt, which does obey it. But
Sainte-Laguë does obey proportionality for solid coalitions more
generally. The point is that Droop proportionality itself is not a
deal breaker for a method, and I find it slightly overused.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Perhaps Droop proportionality isn't the exact proportionality measure
one would want - for instance, for my Bucklin methods, I've tried to
base them on divisor methods rather than on hard quotas - but I think
the concept that "some voters who broadly agree on a group of candidates
should see one of them elected" is a good one. That is, that a group of
voters can have "their" seat without having to agree on a strategy.
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Kristofer Munsterhjelm

2017-06-09 21:21:52 UTC

Permalink

Every divisor method will sometimes fail quota
(http://www.rangevoting.org/Apportion.html). Conversely, no static quote
will do if we want the method to reduce to a divisor method. So
something more sneaky will have to be done if a candidate-based
multiwinner method is to be "divisor method-like" rather than "quota-like".

On a related note, I'm kind of curious if Hare and ordinary Sainte-Lague
is too favoring of small parties. Hong Kong used/uses(?) Hare and, to
quote Wikipedia, "in Hong Kong the use of the Hare quota has prompted
political parties to nominate their candidates on separate tickets, as
under this system this may increase the number of seats they obtain".
But if it is, a slight adjustment is enough: countries using the
modified Sainte-Laguë method don't seem to experience this splintering.
Perhaps there are other reasons, e.g. ordinary Sainte-Laguë is fair if
there's a per-party threshold that keeps single-candidate parties from
being advantageous.
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Andrew Myers

2017-06-05 19:30:34 UTC

Permalink

For what it's worth, the CIVS PR method satisfies Droop proportionality,
and it's getting used in practice on a regular basis.

For example, in one recent election to choose the winner of a book
award, the top 5 books were picked and they were #1, #2, #3, #4, and #17
(!) in the nonproportional Schulze ordering. This seemed initially
surprising but made sense because books #5-#16 all had at least one
author in common with #1-#4.

-- Andrew

Post by Toby Pereira
By the way, a sensible Hare version of proportionality for solid
coalitions would be that for a faction to be guaranteed s seats, then
they should need s - 0.5 Hare quotas (or just over), rather than s
Hare quotas. In the single-winner case, this would translate to 50% of
the vote. This is what Sainte-LaguÃ« guarantees.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Sent:* Monday, 5 June 2017, 18:09
*Subject:* Re: [EM] Resume: Proportional multi-winner ranked voting
methods - guidelines?
As I was saying before, while Droop proportionality has gained a lot
of currency as a criterion, it's just a special case of
proportionality for solid coalitions. We could just as easily talk
about Hare proportionality. For example, the Sainte-LaguÃ« party list
method doesn't obey Droop proportionality, but is seen as more
mathematically proportional than D'Hondt, which does obey it. But
Sainte-LaguÃ« does obey proportionality for solid coalitions more
generally. The point is that Droop proportionality itself is not a
deal breaker for a method, and I find it slightly overused.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Perhaps Droop proportionality isn't the exact proportionality measure
one would want - for instance, for my Bucklin methods, I've tried to
base them on divisor methods rather than on hard quotas - but I think
the concept that "some voters who broadly agree on a group of candidates
should see one of them elected" is a good one. That is, that a group of
voters can have "their" seat without having to agree on a strategy.

Richard Lung

2017-06-04 17:17:07 UTC

Permalink

To all.

Of election method, the founders came up with two (more) options: for
counting ranked choice: Condorcet and Borda.
As previously explained, both ways have information value. This group
talks much about the Condorcet route. I chose the Borda route, as
refined by JB Gregory for multi-member PR. My invention of Binomial STV
progresses on that path. BTV does not have the information-loss problems
from irregularities in the count, as discussed in terms of opportunities
for strategic voting.
I would say that BTV short-comings, which it no doubt has, are to do
with the recognised limitations of traditional statistics, more than
anything else. But BTV underlines that elections really are statistical
exercises of the voters indeterminate support for candidates. Altho some
election results are obvious enough. In general, results are not of the
deductive kind: this is the right result. Rather, this more or less
probably is the balance of voters judgment.

from
Richard Lung.

Post by Kristofer Munsterhjelm

Post by VoteFair

Meanwhile Iâll be thankful for any advice of further readings if you
have.

You, and we, are exploring frontier territory, so there's not a lot of
formal writing about "proportional multi-winner Condorcet" methods
beyond what we've told you about.
If you, or anyone, has specific questions about what I wrote regarding
this topic in "Ending The Hidden Unfairness In U.S. Elections", just ask.

It's not even all that clear what "proportional multi-winner
Condorcet" means, independent of actual implementations. The lower bar
is "reduces to Condorcet when there's only one winner", but how could
we generalize Condorcet beyond that point? Hard to tell.
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Markus Schulze

2017-06-04 07:46:49 UTC

Permalink

Hallo,

Post by VoteFair
After I published the VoteFair ranking system, Markus Schulze
published his "Schulze STV" method, which also fits within
the "proportional multi-winner Condorcet" category.

A very old description (from 2006) of my Schulze STV method
can be found at the website of the Citizens' Assembly on
Electoral Reform in Ontario:

http://www.citizensassembly.gov.on.ca/documents/632974577066763295_schulze_0.zip

Markus Schulze

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VoteFair

2017-06-04 17:18:57 UTC

Permalink

Post by Markus Schulze

Post by VoteFair
After I published the VoteFair ranking system, Markus Schulze
published his "Schulze STV" method, which also fits within
the "proportional multi-winner Condorcet" category.

A very old description (from 2006) of my Schulze STV method
can be found at the website of the Citizens' Assembly on

The first edition of my book "Ending The Hidden Unfairness In U.S.
Elections" was published in printed form on 2006-January-11.

Richard Fobes
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Markus Schulze

2017-06-04 08:40:30 UTC

Permalink

Hallo,

here is my proposal for a multi-winner Condorcet criterion:

Suppose M is the number of seats.

Suppose candidate X wins in every (M+1)-candidate contest.

Then candidate X should also be a winner overall.

Schulze STV satisfies this criterion. See section 9.4. of
this paper:

http://m-schulze.9mail.de/verylong.pdf

Markus Schulze

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Markus Schulze

2017-06-04 19:03:40 UTC

Permalink

Hallo,

Post by VoteFair
After I published the VoteFair ranking system, Markus Schulze
published his "Schulze STV" method, which also fits within
the "proportional multi-winner Condorcet" category.
A very old description (from 2006) of my Schulze STV method
can be found at the website of the Citizens' Assembly on

http://www.citizensassembly.gov.on.ca/documents/632974577066763295_schulze_0.zip

Post by VoteFair
The first edition of my book "Ending The Hidden Unfairness
In U.S. Elections" was published in printed form on
2006-January-11.

Maybe January 2006 was the target date for the publication of
Fobes' book "Ending the Hidden Unfairness in U.S. Elections".
However, the first time that this book was actually mentioned
somewhere was in January 2007:

http://www.citizensassembly.gov.on.ca/en-CA/Get-Involved/View-And-Search-Submissions/Detailed-View.aspx?ID=1580

Markus Schulze

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VoteFair

2017-06-08 04:25:56 UTC

Permalink

After comments about publication/website-posting dates, this message
explains some proportionality concepts that get back to the topic of
this thread.

Post by Markus Schulze
...
Maybe January 2006 was the target date for the publication of
Fobes' book "Ending the Hidden Unfairness in U.S. Elections".
However, the first time that this book was actually mentioned

This brings up an interesting question. Which is more significant? A
description on a website? Or a publication in a book or academic journal?

Clearly both Markus Schulze and I have been independently developing
advanced voting methods.

For clarification about my publication dates: (followed by an
explanation of the proportional aspects)

* The description of VoteFair popularity ranking -- which is
mathematically equivalent to the Condorcet-Kemeny method -- is described
in my book titled "The Creative Problem Solver's Toolbox" which I
published at the beginning of 1993. At the time I developed this method
I did not find a description of it online. Later, Markus Schulze
claimed that the Condorcet-Kemeny method was described online, but the
short-paragraph description he referred to was both ambiguous and
clearly different from what I came up with. FYI, I based my idea on the
math concept typically used to fit a straight line through a set of
points, but without the need to do squaring.

* The descriptions of almost all other aspects of VoteFair ranking are
described in my book "Ending The Hidden Unfairness In U.S. Elections"
which I finished getting ready for the printer on 2006-January-11.

* What I'm now calling VoteFair negotiation ranking I developed later,
after writing those two books. Recently I posted the software that runs
the www.NegotiationTool.com website to GitHub. Of primary interest to
this group is the calculation algorithm at this link:

https://github.com/cpsolver/VoteFair-Negotiation-Tool/blob/master/sub_sort_proposals_overall.pl

Be forewarned that the algorithm is complex, and the comments assume the
reader is familiar with the information at the www.NegotiationTool.com
website.

The second and third items above are what are relevant to this thread
because both of them implement proportional results. The approach in my
"elections" book applies when voters can indicate a favorite political
party.

In contrast, the VoteFair negotiation tool applies to smaller groups of
people (such as an organization or a parliament), and does not require
political-party identities, and applies to arriving at a set of
proposals -- which do not need to involve candidates competing for seats.

For comparison, the Schulze-STV method does not request political-party
preferences, and only applies to candidates.

My highest priority -- even above getting credit for my contributions --
is to get better voting methods adopted so that unnecessary suffering
under the negative effects of corruption can come to an end sooner
rather than later.

If that doesn't happen, there won't be any election-reform history worth
writing about, and then publication/website-posting dates will not be of
interest.

Richard Fobes

Post by Markus Schulze
Hallo,

http://www.citizensassembly.gov.on.ca/documents/632974577066763295_schulze_0.zip

Post by VoteFair
The first edition of my book "Ending The Hidden Unfairness
In U.S. Elections" was published in printed form on
2006-January-11.

Maybe January 2006 was the target date for the publication of
Fobes' book "Ending the Hidden Unfairness in U.S. Elections".
However, the first time that this book was actually mentioned
http://www.citizensassembly.gov.on.ca/en-CA/Get-Involved/View-And-Search-Submissions/Detailed-View.aspx?ID=1580
Markus Schulze
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