[Koha] Koha license upgrade voting method

[Clay Shentrup]

On Fri, Jan 14, 2011 at 10:14, Thomas Dukleth <kohalist at agogme.com> wrote:

> Clay is described in the book
> as a fanatical advocate for score voting but good ideas need somewhat
> fanatical supporters to ensure that they have due attention.


Well, the description of me was from Rob Richie, the executive director of
FairVote. He said something about how someone will need a restraining order
against me some day, and claimed that I had been calling various third party
members up at late hours to pitch Score Voting to them. Unless there was
some major time zone change I inadvertently forgot to take into account, I
think that's a fabrication.

In my experience with Richie, spanning the course of four and a half years
so far, I have found him to be extremely dishonest, when he can get away
with it. For instance, he has claimed on numerous occasions that e.g. the
2009 Burlington IRV election was not a failure of monotonicity, when it is
just a proven mathematical fact that it indeed was. The full ballot data was
published, so this is not in any way in question.

Warren Smith, the Princeton math Ph.D. at the center of the Score Voting
movement (and quoted in Gaming the Vote) tried to catalog various FairVote
lies, but eventually just  gave up because they are too numerous to even
keep track of.
http://ScoreVoting.net/Irvtalk.html

In another message, I will address the important issues of voting strategy
> with score voting.
>

Discussions of "strategy" are frequently plagued with logical fallacies, and
a lack of awareness of key concepts like Bayesian regret. Here are some
links which help to inform on this complex and counterintuitive issue.

http://www.electology.org/tactical-voting
http://www.electology.org/bullet-voting
http://scorevoting.net/UniqBest.html
http://scorevoting.net/StratHonMix.html
http://scorevoting.net/PleasantSurprise.html
http://scorevoting.net/AppCW.html
http://www.electology.org/threshold
http://scorevoting.net/RVstrat3.html
http://scorevoting.net/RVstrat4.html

The deficiency in the
> FairVote criticism of range voting to which I linked was that the scenario
> they give uses a range which is unduly high relative to the number of
> voters.
>
> Their scenario has 100 voters casting ballots with a range of 0 to 99.
>

I don't know what the number of voters has to do with the range of scores.
In any case, I think a 0-9 scale should be plenty.


> The relatively large range allows merely two voters using a reasonable
> voting strategy of casting their greatest preference strongly at the
> maximum range of 99 to outvote all other voters expressing their greatest
> preference weakly near the minimum of the range at 1.
>

Well, yes. That analogy is pretty absurd in its sheer implausibility.
However, the range they use is precisely what is advocated by some people.
(I advocate 0-9, as I said.)
http://scorevoting.net/Why99.html

A reasonably low range relative to the number of voters along with voters
> who use some half intelligent sense of voting strategy avoids the
> unreasonable case above.  [In a later message, I will propose a means for
> resolving some issues of voting strategy.]
>

I will bet you a year's salary that your ideas here have been discussed to
death on our Yahoo discussion group a myriad of times over the past 5 years.
:)

Some statements from FairVote founder, Robert Richie, seem to show that he
> would advocate whatever non-plurality (non-first past the post) voting
> method  would be most likely to obtain sufficient political support to be
> implemented for government elections.


Not my impression at all. I think he is incredibly resistant to changing his
pro-IRV/STV platform, because it would mean having to admit he was wrong all
those years. He could even lose his directorship of FairVote.

Any real preference by FairVote may
> be for a voting method which is useful as first step to proportional
> representation, the long term objective of FairVote.  Instant runoff
> voting can be transformed into the single transferable ballot for
> proportional representation.
>

Exactly what I said. They support IRV, despite his severe problems, because
they see it as a stepping stone to STV. I think that is naive of them
because the USA is so rigged against PR (e.g. PR is illegal for Congress).
So we believe that getting PR to any non-trivial extent (i.e. beyond a
handful of US cities) will require FIRST getting Score or Approval Voting as
a PREREQUISITE.

And there are PR analogs of Score Voting which are better+simpler than STV.
http://ScoreVoting.net/PropRep.html
http://ScoreVoting.net/RRV.html = Reweighted Range Voting
http://ScoreVoting.net/Asset.html = Asset Voting

Poundstone reports that there has been sufficient support to institute
> instant runoff voting in some jurisdictions because of well financed
> support from FairVote.  Less well financed supporters of alternatives
> other than instant runoff voting appear divided because all voting systems
> are subject to some significant criticism.
>

Well, I would say we are divided BECAUSE of the rampant misinformation out
there about voting methods, much of which is the RESULT of FairVote's
inaccurate propaganda. Albeit a lot of it is also just an innocent result of
the confusing nature of election theory and game theory in general.


> I have not identified any adequate modification of IRV.  IRV works by
> always eliminating some preferences.  [Other preference voting systems
> attempt to compare all preferences without eliminating any.]


Right. E.g. Bucklin.

Anyway Thomas, you seem quite intelligent and informed about these issues.
If you have any interest in joining our efforts in any capacity, please let
us know. You could be featured on this extremely fancy page.
http://www.electology.org/about-us

Best,
Clay

-- 
*Clay Shentrup*
*Secretary, Director*
*The Center for Election Science*
*http://www.electology.org/*
*206.801.0484*
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