Paladinwannabe2

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Tbouricius and Abd

Approval voting is unique in that the first choice candidate of a voter is often not clearly marked as such on the ballot. With any other voting system, the first choice is usually clear. (Even in range voting first choices are almost always ranked higher than second choices). Because of this, deciding if Approval voting passes Majority criterion is a tricky one. Every other voting system it's pretty obvious if it passes or fails. (Most likely when the Majority Criterion was created Approval voting wasn't on anyone's minds). This leaves game theorists (and us puny wikipedians) with an interesting question: Do we consider the unexpressed intent behind the ballots, or do we consider the actual ballot?

If we consider the intent behind the ballots as determining whether something passes the majority criterion, then we have to complicate the Majority criterion by making at least two additional claims, specifically that none of the voters will vote insincerely, and that voters are unaware of each other's preferences. (If voters could vote insincerely, 'cheating' voters could spoil their own victory. If voters are aware of each other's preferences, then Approval voting with rational voters would always elects someone with >50% approval).

On the other hand, only looking at physical ballots ignores the fact that Approval voting doesn't allow people to express a first choice all the time- and thus some argue it should fail the majority criterion by default.

I'm still trying to figure out which solution is less bad, and sourcing more qualified people would help. Paladinwannabe2 22:59, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

By the way, top posting is the opposite of what nearly everyone does with talk, and if you want to get someone's attention, you put it on their talk page, since Wikipedia will tell you if there are messages on your Talk page....

I came across what you've been writing about quite some time ago, and you can find extensive debate on this issue on the Election Methods mailing list. There seems to be a strong preference among many to consider the unexpressed preferences as the basis; but this, then, begs the question, for it then becomes necessary to specify how these preferences are expressed on the ballot. James Armytage-Green -- almost the only source cited for the MC article -- is aware of the problem and attempts to define how the vote is expressed. But, of course, he is making it up, what he writes is not necessarily accepted, it's just his attempt to solve the problem. And it's clear that his *intention* is to make Approval fail, so he fails to examine his assumptions closely enough; he assumes that not insincere is ipso facto sincere, thus lumping the middle in with one side. What is clear to me is that the A=B vote conceals a preference between A and B if it exists, and that therefore such a vote is not "fully sincere," and, for the purposes of the Criterion, we can assert that it is not sincere. There are thus three kinds of votes, not two: fully sincere, ambiguous (sincere in some aspects and not in others), and insincere, i.e., reversing preference. An A=B vote is an abstention from the pairwise election between A and B, so the majority, if it votes in this manner (or if a sufficient portion of the majority votes this way), has concealed a material preference and has accordingly abstained from that pairwise election.

We don't get to make up definitions of words, though, so the question in the article is *What in the bloody **** is the Majority Criterion?* You are not the first person to notice the problem!

The question of strategic voting is irrelevant. The majority criterion has nothing to do with the knowledge of the voters. That knowledge, if defective, might motivate the voters to vote "insincerely," but then the condition tested is not present. Approval Voting, contrary to what seems to be an incautious statement by you, *always* allows voters to express the exclusive preference necessary for the M.C. test, but *other conditions* may make it inadvisable. Perhaps the police are watching and will arrest him if he casts the wrong vote. Or his favorite isn't going to win, he thinks, so he votes for someone else. Of course, with Approval, he would also approve his favorite, hence the irony: the majority has an additional power with approval, and if it exercises that power, it supposedly loses its right to prevail. TANSTAAFL. With good applications of Approval, it's moot. Consider that in many places, if we simply start counting all the votes, we have Approval, no fuss, no cost, and, yes, it is actually simpler than plurality, no ballots need be discarded for overvotes. Now, if there is a majority election requirement, and if this is extended to require a runoff as well if there are N candidates with more than a majority, N>1, then the combined method clearly meets the Majority Criterion. Note that double majorities in public elections would be normally rare, so triple majorities should be very rare, and a triple majority runoff would probably terminate with a single winner, the risk of having to run an extra runoff would be extraordinarily low.

But the debate here is about the Criterion, not about what methods are best or what anyone should "advocate." Have you considered joining the Election Methods Interest Group? There is a Wikipedia Committee where the Criterion is being actively considered, and Mr. Bouricious is a participant there. I gave you, I think, the overall EMIG URL, and I'd recommend joining EMIG as well as the Wikipedia Committee. This is a mailing list being used as a consensus-discovery device, and the process has only begun; we will at some point start working on a Report, and the acceptance of that Report by the general EMIG membership -- which includes some pretty well-known election methods experts -- will, in my opinion, constitute peer-reviewed publication (when properly handled, and it might actually be published, at least in part, in print), and thus it could become an authoritative source for the article.... and be, even more importantly, a precedent for such. Abd 04:50, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

James Green's definition of 'Majority Criterion'

I'm not sure if this is where you prefer that I answer your question, but you can delete it after reading it, if I made a protocol error (I'm new at Wikipedia editing).

You asked for a source about Approval failing the majority criterion. You can find it in any political science election theory text book that covers the subject, but the easiest reference is the external link that is right in the Majority Criterion article first paragraph...which is

http://fc.antioch.edu/~james_green-armytage/vm/define.htm#mc

This source link has been there all along...its just that pro-Approval editors ignored the sourced facts and inserted their unorthodox POV.

Tbouricius 21:44, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

(unindent) Tbouricius sees what is here on Wikipedia through his advocacy glasses (he is a consultant for FairVote. Editors had inserted language from the reference he cites, which he removed, claiming that this had been done by "pro-Approval" editors. The problem is that the language used in the Criterion is ambiguous, for "prefer" or "rank" can refer to mental states or to marks on a ballot. I've had correspondence with James Armytage-Green, the source he cites, about this issue: if you look at the notes at the end, you will see that James struggles with the problem, and is quite aware that his suggested solution is not fully satisfactory. In order to use mental preferences as a standard, he must provide a definition for how those preferences are translated into votes, so he specifies that the votes must be "sincere." However, he proceeds to give differing definitions for sincere voting, depending on which method he is considering. If he applied the definition he created for Plurality to Approval, Approval would pass the criterion.... but his intuition is that Approval fails, so he then tries to define a sincere vote in Approval differently. Instead, however, he defines an "insincere" vote, not a "sincere" one. Then, by assuming that a not-insincere vote is a sincere one, he manages to come up with a definition that works as he wants. This is far short of a simple, objective Criterion!

Tbouricius continually claims that his views are found in "any political science election theory text book" but he has, so far, provided not one reference or quotation. And he's been asked for them! What is clear from James Armytage-Green, who is a student of political science just completing, I think, his degree, is that the problem is *not* as simple as Tbouricius claims. I have been unable to see the earliest work on the Majority Criterion to determine how it was originally intended, but there are many different wordings of the Criterion with differing implications. It's true that many authors have stated that Approval fails the criterion, but I've been following the controversy on this for years. It is not resolved, and part of the problem is that the *purpose* of the Majority Criterion is often neglected, and the debate centers on technical compliance. Approval satisfies "majority rule," if the winner obtains a majority, because a majority has explicitly consented to the election of that candidate, and the only possible objection is that there may be more than one such candidate; but it is a common principle in the law of referenda that if multiple conflicting referenda obtain majority approvals, the one with the most Yes votes prevails. While, technically, it could be that a majority, in a head-to-head contest, would prefer the other one, this would, in fact, be unusual. Abd 05:01, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Tbouricius and I have been talking about this issue, and I realize that he needs more information than his single source (and have mentioned as much to him). To the best of my limited knowledge, the Majority criterion has traditionally only been used to compare ranked ballots to other ranked ballot systems, and as such there is... difficulty applying it to Approval Voting and Plurality voting. I'm currently opposed to anyone saying that Approval voting passes or fails the Majority Criterion. Furthermore, as you point out, (And as I pointed out to you in one of the talk pages) failing the majority criterion is not necessarily a failure of Approval voting: a candidate with broad support may be better than a candidate 51% of the population loves and 49% of the population hates. Depending on how much you like moderates you may agree or disagree with this statement. Paladinwannabe2 14:13, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

"Sincere" voting by the majority

"Sincere" voting by the majority involved in the M.C. is a required condition if we take "prefer" to refer to mental state. Problem is, that is not defined for Approval. James A.-G. is aware of the problem, but fails to solve it. He assumes that "not insincere" is "sincere." I'm attempting to resolve the issue, and others, through EMIG, see [1]. Abd 19:19, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

MC continued

writing on a Palm - must be succinct. lf you understood context and what I'm writing, you would see you are preaching to the choir. I've for years wrltten about all you've said and more, almost as a voice in the wilderness. We are up against an established view that is nonsense when examined closely. Abd 21:06, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

On Sincerity and the Majority Criterion

Thanks for your comment on my Talk page, User_talk:Abd. First of all, this question has been under extended discussion on the Election Methods Interest Group mailing list, Wikipedia committee, see the reference I provided above for EMIG, which is open to all interested in election methods. The Wikipedia committee is considering issues related to matters that come up on Wikipedia that are difficult to address from standard reliable sources. I assume that eventually the committee will come up with a draft Report which would then be presented for review by the entire membership of EMIG. Essentially, if a Report is accepted by the interest group, if the review satisfies reasonable standards for "peer review," as it is intended to do, the Report would be published as a fixed text and thus become a legitimate source for Wikipedia, the only difference being from it and other peer-reviewed sources being that the impetus for the Report came from a perceived need by someone working on Wikipedia articles.

You are specifically invited to join EMIG, if you have not done so.

In this matter, what had become obvious was that there was no clear definition of the "Majority Criterion," and discussion on the Wikipedia committee has only deepened, for me, this impression. Woodall's "Majority property" was designed for ranked methods and its application to restricted-ranked methods is possibly outside the original intention. However, it seems that Woodall has, possibly in unpublished material -- it's hard enough to get access to some published material, not to mention unpublished -- applied his "property" to Approval and he claims that it failed, but in what I've seen from him, he did not adequately specify *how* it failed.

The problem is that a "sincere vote" in Approval and Plurality are not defined. It's easy to have an "impression" about what it means, but if we are going to use Election Criteria, their application should not be subjective. It should be crisp and clear, and that detail, quite simply, was not supplied by Woodall and others. Hence this question has continually come up on Wikipedia and elsewhere.

Yes, if we insist that the preference be an actually expressed one, Plurality would satisfy the Condorcet criterion, and "we all know" that it does not. But how do we know this? Well, we know that people don't vote sincerely! That is, they have one favorite and they vote for another. So we then require that the vote be sincere. What does this mean?

James Armytage-Green attempts to address this. I hope you have read that source! Unfortunately, he does not succeed; he does require that the vote in Approval be "sincere," but he doesn't define "sincere," instead he defines "insincere." That is, an insincere vote in Approval is one which reverses preference. This, then, matches the definition of an "insincere" vote in ranked methods.

Problem is, what about equal ranking? There are plenty of methods considered Condorcet-compliant that allow equal ranking. Further, what about rank restrictions? If the ballot does not allow full ranking, then it is possible that a hidden rank (unexpressed) would flip the Condorcet winner).

And then, *what is the purpose of the Majority Criterion*. If there is an ambiguity in the definition of the Criterion, then we have two choices that are legitimate: claim that the Criterion does not apply to the method, or tighten the definition so that it is not ambiguous. If we are going to tighten the definition, it would seem to me that we should tighten it in a direction that better serves the *purpose* of the Majority Criterion, which is not merely to make abstract statements about election methods. What is the Criterion for?

Woodall considers his Majority property (which is based on preferred sets rather than preferred individual candidates) to be important, as I recall, because of its relationship with "majority rule." Majority rule refers to the right of a majority to make a decision in the presence of an objection by a minority. Does Approval violate the principle of majority rule? And so this, then, becomes the core question, in my opinion, if we are going to tighten the definition.

The sense, so far, on the EMIG Wikipedia committee, from moderate participation (so far), is that there are two criteria here. Working names were given of Majority Criterion/Votes, which is based on expressed votes, and Majority Favorite, based on preference listings plus a sincere vote. Problem is, nobody else has yet offered a definition of "sincere vote" that addresses all the issues.

Trying to fill the gap, I have proposed that Majority Favorite be defined as Green-Armytage did, only explicitly. "If a majority of voters prefer a candidate over all others, and vote showing preference for at least one candidate, and do not reverse preference in their votes, then the majority-preferred candidate will prevail." What this does is to effectively define equal ranking as sincere, even though it conceals a preference, but it avoids calling this "sincere" since it clearly is not *fully sincere.*

So far, however, there has been no response to my suggestion, and, with the lack of response, I've been busy with other matters. The fact is, though, that if the majority truly votes sincerely, knowingly accepting a compromise candidate, perhaps as an additional Approval, there is no offense to majority rule. The alleged failure of MC by Approval occurs when a majority favors one candidate, but *also* approves another. It is actually common practice with multiple conflicting Ballot Questions that if two conflicting questions both get a majority, the one with the most Yes votes prevails, and I have never seen it alleged that this is a failure of majority rule. But it is quite possible that the favorite of the majority was passed over for one more broadly acceptable.

The real problem is that election methods compromise majority rule. Robert's Rules of Order prefers multiple balloting to complete elections where there is majority failure, and plurality wins are not allowed under the Rules unless explicitly permitted by the Bylaws -- which RR does *not* recommend. Whenever there is a win by a mere plurality, majority rule has been compromised, and methods that supposedly satisfy the Majority Criterion, if they allow plurality elections (such as IRV when ballot exhaustion takes place, as it *must* take place unless voters are coerced into ranking *all* candidates, thus treating a voter has having approved Genghis Khan merely because the voter ranked Khan higher than Hitler), are actually failing "majority rule." Approval *never* fails "majority rule" in this sense, for if we assume sincere votes, and no preference reversal, if a majority has voted for a candidate it did not prefer exclusively, it must also have voted for the actual preferred candidate, so we have the multiple majority issue, not simple majority failure. Approval *can* fail to find a majority, and so it suffers just like Plurality from that particular failure. Its failure of Majority Favorite is actually not at all a majority rule issue.

Hence some have proposed, to be completely sure, that, just as there might be a runoff in an Approval election if there is a failure to obtain a majority for any candidate, there could be a runoff if two gain a majority. However, it could also be argued that it is not worth the effort, and, in fact, *usually* the one with the most votes would prevail in the runoff, based on what we know from simulations and analysis of the likely circumstances. That could easily be true even if there was actual Majority Favorite failure, and to understand that we'd have to look at Range Voting theory. --Abd 18:28, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Controversies regarding instant-runoff voting - delete nomination

I've nominated Controversies regarding instant-runoff voting for deletion. Please review and weigh in on this issue. QuirkyAndSuch (talk) 09:00, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Notice of deletion debate for Instant-runoff voting controversies

You have either participated in a previous deletion debate over this article, or edited the article or its Talk page. If you are interested in contributing to the current debate, please visit Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Instant-runoff voting controversies (2nd nomination). Thanks. --Abd (talk) 22:13, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Race and Crime

I went looking for the Race and Crime article and found it merged with Anthropological criminology, a move I certainly disagree with. I see that you also disagree with it. I'm new to wiki, so how do I go about objecting to the mergers and advocating for the articles to be separated? (though in practice Race and Crime was deleted). Zzmang (talk) 00:39, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

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