Please vote for our Approval Voting video (using Approval Voting!)

[Clay Shentrup]

http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/14935-the-united-states-needs-approval-voting

Incidentally, here's an entry from FairVote Minnesota, making the common false claims on "Ranked Choice Voting".

http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/15145-who-s-your-favorite-president-how-ranked-choice-voting-works

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

Arrggh.... Clay, please don't do what you did there. It might already
be too late. You commented with a complex argument about IRV that
most readers will ignore, and you signed it with Center for Election Science.

Were you speaking for the Center? Do you have Board approval? If
using the name of the Center without board approval is allowed, major
damage can be done.

The judges will read the comments. Did you think about how *they*
might look at a member of the board of one organization submitting a
video has commented on a competing submission?

It could torpedo our chances, I'll suggest. It is *very* "unseemly."

Imagine a beauty contest -- and this is, in some ways, a beauty
contest -- and one contestant makes public comments from the contest
stage, claiming another is ugly. That contestant making that claim
just lost *no matter what she looked like.*

Can comments be deleted by the author?

By the way, are you aware that commenting on a video increases the
visibility of that video?

To see what is happening in the contest, I sort by the "comment"
field, and our video comes up top. So starting a conversation on
another video's page will shift what may be an obscure video into one
more visible.

I also subscribed to the comment feed for our video, I assume that
the MN IRV people are subscribed to that. So you just created a
possible motivation for them to come and debate on *our* video's
page. While that might also increase visibility, we were *already at
the top*, so you risk something else with no benefit:

These are people highly experienced at presenting winning arguments,
as to what *real people* accept. You will not overcome this by "being
right." It takes much more skill than that.

I suggest a CES policy. Nobody makes public statements as if they
were positions of CES, without *specific* board approval. It's bad
enough that Clay makes public statements *without* using the name of
the Center, because some people will google him, find that he is on
the board, and still conclude these are official positions. We began
very informally. To deal with what is coming, we need to tighten up.

It's even worse, of course, because the example was incorrect.

Yes, there are misrepresentations in that IRV video. But getting into
arguments, there, is a very bad idea. Answering questions, simply,
perhaps in a way that invites "joining the conversation," that could
be okay, but, again, not necessarily there.

[Clay Shentrup]

Abd,

I went out of my way not to criticize IRV, but instead to merely "fact check" two misleading comments. Except for the FBC part, I could have made the exact same comments even as an IRV proponent. In a subsequent post, I specifically said:

However, I want to be clear that I don't think this makes IRV "a bad system". I think it can be a big improvement over ordinary vote-for-one Plurality Voting.

I want to be clear that this was not about "criticizing IRV". It was about fact-checking claims in the video.

I'd be fine deleting it, if there were an option to. I don't think the judges are going to be too concerned about a little healthy debate about the merits of some of the submissions, so long as it doesn't get negative or disrespectful.

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 03:01 PM 5/7/2013, Clay Shentrup wrote:
>Abd,
>
>I went out of my way not to criticize IRV, but instead to merely
>"fact check" two misleading comments. Except for the FBC part, I
>could have made the exact same comments even as an IRV proponent. In
>a subsequent post, I specifically said:
>
>However, I want to be clear that I don't think this makes IRV "a bad
>system". I think it can be a big improvement over ordinary
>vote-for-one Plurality Voting.

I haven't seen that post, but that could help, except that first
impressions can be difficult to dispel. I am not objecting to your
comments factually (except for the error).

>I want to be clear that this was not about "criticizing IRV". It was
>about fact-checking claims in the video.
>
>I'd be fine deleting it, if there were an option to. I don't think
>the judges are going to be too concerned about a little healthy
>debate about the merits of some of the submissions, so long as it
>doesn't get negative or disrespectful.

We can only control our own behavior, not that of others.

"A little healthy debate" may or may not be a problem, but such on
the part of someone who *will be perceived as partisan*, a competing
contestant, that's my concern.

Now that it's done, and especially that you have added an
ameliorating comment, I don't know that anything more can be done. I
do think that CES should look at *anyone* speaking for CES without
board authorization for the context and without distinguishing
between personal opinion and CES official positions.

CES is moving into the big time, where details like this matter.

As to my personal position, I'll agree that IRV could be an
*improvement* over plurality, *under some circumstances.* Cost is an
issue, as well as system performance. My hope is that decision-makers
are well-informed, and in that process, myths promoted by partisans
are noise to be cleared up. The context pages, though, are not making
such a decision. The judges *might* avoid awarding a prize to some
video maker who presents misleading information, assuming that they
can detect that.

I know full well how tempting it is to counter what we know is
misleading information. But context matters, and, my suggestion, this
isn't the context in which to do it. Here is a place where we are
probably better off letting the videos speak for themselves and
letting the *public* comment. As I mentioned, in that context, we
might *carefully and conservatively* answer questions. If we get into
a fight over what the best voting system is, I suspect, we might both lose.

Aside from that, I just viewed the IRV video. You raised the Favorite
Betrayal issue, motivation to vote insincerely, which was not
relevant to the *main argument* actually made in the film. That
argument is that IRV provides a "choice made by the majority," and
the graphics illustrate the votes accumulating to finally cross a
fixed line, the line of the majority. That's actually how it would
work, when it works, under Robert's Rules of Order. That is *not* how
what FairVote promotes in the U.S. actually works. In real practice,
in most nonpartisan IRV elections, if the election goes into
elimination rounds, the result is *not* a majority of the votes, but
only a plurality. "Majority" is the *fundamental point* of the video,
but you didn't raise that, but a much more complex point, with the
obvious answer being that "this isn't going to happen." I.e., the
Republicans are not going to abandon their favorite, in reality. That
misses the point, of course, but this is how this argument *really
goes* in discussions among people trying to choose a system.

So if you were going to raise an argument "correcting" the video, it
would be on that point, where the video is *clearly false* as to
actual practice. The video simply assumes that all voters have ranked
all candidates, which then will use a fixed majority, it's done that
way in Australia, where voters are *required by law* to vote and to
vote that way. That would never be accepted here. Where voters have
the freedom to not vote for candidates they dislike, they abstain,
and will only vote for the candidates they are personally willing to
support. So majority failure, it turns out, easily occurs.

It occurs with IRV where it might not occur with "Instant Runoff
Approval," i.e., Bucklin, because that method will keep counting
votes, and there are no eliminations, and real Bucklin did, even with
many candidates, find majorities in general elections. To truly seek
a majority, if that's considered important, without the problems from
eliminating candidates prematurely, it probably takes a system that
can go to two rounds, and more sophistication in the voting methods.

So when I want to focus on a single problem about IRV, I usually
point to the "faux majority" that has *often* been used to claim that
Ranked Choice voting "still requires the candidate to gain a majority
of the votes," a highly deceptive statement that was in the San
Francisco Voter Imformation pamphlet. Majority of what votes. A naive
voter might conclude that a "vote" is a set of marks on a ballot,
that all such marks which legally choose a candidate -- and don't
violate rules -- are "votes," and this is the basis for "majority."

The MN FairVote video is reasonably well done, though it is no match
for the CES video. However, it's founded on a radical misconception,
and I'm a bit surprised that this is still being promoted by a major
FairVote chapter. It's been clarified here that the chapters are
independent, but surely FairVote itself would, ah, educate their
chapters? I *could* conclude that they don't because this argument
can win support. It could be convenient to let it stand.

And that is the trap that *activists* fall into.

[Clay Shentrup]

We need your votes! You can sign in with Facebook or Github.

The current top 10 are:

Solutions To Strengthening America's Democracy / 158

Civic Hacking in Pursuit of Democracy / 119

Dear Democracy… / 97

Bring It to The Table / 92

Spin / 73

DIVE IN: This is What Democracy Looks Like / 64

Exciting / 61

Carrots and Sticks for Democracy / 60

Agenda Setters / 55

Democracy is US! / 50

Here's the #1 video, with 158 votes. Surely we can do better than this!

http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/14932-solutions-to-strengthening-america-s-democracy

Vote here. http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/14935-the-united-states-needs-approval-voting

[Jameson Quinn]

2013/5/7 Clay Shentrup <cl...@electology.org>

We need your votes! You can sign in with Facebook or Github.

The current top 10 are:

Solutions To Strengthening America's Democracy / 158

Civic Hacking in Pursuit of Democracy / 119

Dear Democracy… / 97

Bring It to The Table / 92

Spin / 73

DIVE IN: This is What Democracy Looks Like / 64

Exciting / 61

Carrots and Sticks for Democracy / 60

Agenda Setters / 55

Democracy is US! / 50

Here's the #1 video, with 158 votes. Surely we can do better than this!

http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/14932-solutions-to-strengthening-america-s-democracy

Wow. That is just painfully bad in every regard. Bad ideas, bad analysis, bad production, and horrible music. But if People's Choice is worth $5000, then at 158 votes that's over $30 per vote; plenty of incentive to rig the voting.

 

Vote here. http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/14935-the-united-states-needs-approval-voting

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[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 07:16 AM 5/8/2013, Jameson Quinn wrote:


>2013/5/7 Clay Shentrup <<mailto:cl...@electology.org>cl...@electology.org>

>We need your votes! You can sign in with Facebook or Github.
>
>The current top 10 are:
>Solutions To Strengthening America's Democracy / 158
>Civic Hacking in Pursuit of Democracy / 119
>Dear Democracy… / 97
>Bring It to The Table / 92
>Spin / 73
>DIVE IN: This is What Democracy Looks Like / 64
>Exciting / 61
>Carrots and Sticks for Democracy / 60
>Agenda Setters / 55
>Democracy is US! / 50
>
>Here's the #1 video, with 158 votes. Surely we can do better than this!

><http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/14932-solutions-to-strengthening-america-s-democracy>http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/14932-solutions-to-strengthening-america-s-democracy

>
>
>Wow. That is just painfully bad in every regard.
>Bad ideas, bad analysis, bad production, and
>horrible music. But if People's Choice is worth
>$5000, then at 158 votes that's over $30 per
>vote; plenty of incentive to rig the voting.

This idea, that the video is leading because of
vote rigging, is disempowering. It's possible,
but the judges will almost certainly be looking
at IP addresses and stuff like that. If it's
rigged by a large number of supporters voting,
uh, that's the "people's choice."

I'm concerned that we are not in the top ten. Now, why?

I suggest, for starters, looking at that #1 video
and seeing what's good about it, not what we don't like.

I look at the page and see what pops up as an
image from the video, and it *personally* turns
me off. Awful idea, utterly impractical, the kind
of thing that people propose who simply resent
what happens in politics but have zero idea about
how to fix except a vague idea about punishing
politicians. I.e., I immediately see something so
wrong that I don't even look further.

I will. I haven't yet, because I can't watch
videos with sound on my desktop, I'll need to watch it on my iPhone.

On the other hand, the popularity could be
precisely from that segment of the population
that quickly attaches to such simplistic fixed,
that allow them to go "Yeah! That's it! Fine the Bastards."

Meanwhile, we need to realize that the voting at
this point is just crowd-sourced advice into the
judging process. In theory, our behavior as an
organization, or the behavior of our supporters,
should have no effect on the judge's decisions. Except for one thing.

They are deciding where money will go, and how
they perceive the artist or organization it will go to, could be crucial.

That's why I'm putting so much focus on how our
comments will appear, and the effects they might
have. It's something we have control over.

Sure, we should all vote, sincerely. It's
Approval voting, and we will all face the central
Approval strategy problem. Do we vote for other
videos in addition to our favorite? I'd prefer
Bucklin or Range voting with more categories, to
use Arrow's terminology for ratings.

One question: is there a way to see all the current votes?

And one very, very strong request: Please do not
create socks to vote. If they see a significant
amount of that, they could disqualify us on that
basis. One idiot, probably not. But several could
push them in this way. (Unless you are an expert,
don't even think of trying to evade detection,
even experts err in this and get detected. I'm
not making a moral argument here, but a very
practical one, that happens to coincide with
moral considerations, i.e, let the best video
win, and we trust democracy or why would we even be bothering with all this?)

>
>Vote here.
><http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/14935-the-united-states-needs-approval-voting>http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/14935-the-united-states-needs-approval-voting

>
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[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

No harm so far, but this is the kind of thing that could cause harm.
Aaron wrote in the comments for our video:

><http://challengepost.com/users/ryancwiklinski>Ryan C about 22 hours ago
>
>Great video and great concept. It's interesting to see it compared
>to Ranked Choice Voting:
><http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/15145-who-s-your-favorite-president-how-ranked-choice-voting-works>http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/15145-who-s-your-favorite-president-how-ranked-choice-voting-works
>
><http://challengepost.com/users/ElectionScience>Aaron H about 22 hours ago
>
>Thanks, Ryan. As you can imagine, our focused support for Approval
>Voting over other methods is quite deliberate. It's hard to imagine
>a simpler improvement. Plus, you can always vote your favorite in
>Approval Voting. This is a feature that is simply unavailable to
>Ranked Choice Voting and other ranked methods. It's remarkable how
>much gain there is from Approval Voting just by letting voters pick
>as many candidates as they want.

Basically, Ryan's comment will increase awareness of the RCV video. I
don't know who "Ryan" is and the public may indeed introduce
comparisons, we can't stop that, but then Aaron responds with a
comment that will make sense to people who know voting systems, at
least it's reasonable to such people, and that will make *no sense*
to the general public, and it could *enrage* supporters of RCV.

RCV is precisely advertised as "you can vote your favorite." Aaron is
*correct* in that you can "always vote your favorite" *without any
harm* with Approval. The harm of it is relatively obscure with RCV.
That harm only shows up in certain situations, essentially ones where
there are three major parties or factions. Precisely the situation in
Burlington, VT. It is irrelevant to most IRV situations.

Aaron's comment about "other ranked systems" is also incorrect.
Bucklin is a "ranked approval system." You can always vote for your
favorite without harm in Bucklin, except in an *extremely rare*
situation, probably never seen, and it involves multiple majorities
in a higher rank, and it's fixed in more complex Bucklin systems that
are still ranked. (I've simply seen people propose a scenario where
full strategic maximization would require an additional approval in
first rank, so traditional Bucklin could lead to FBC failure, but
ER-Bucklin does not.)

My sense is that debate over the best system, aside from Approval vs.
Plurality, is likely to damage our prospects. We might even see some
strategic voting from RCV supporters, i.e., if they think their own
video isn't going to get an award, they might vote for something else
they think could beat ours that otherwise they would not vote for. We
really don't get ahead by making enemies.

If they think we are arguing unfairly against IRV, and this is about
perception, it doesn't actually matter if our arguments are "actually
fair" or not, they will resent it and see us as the enemy. We already
have too much of that.

Indeed, much of my strong opposition to FairVote is related to unfair
and misleading arguments they presented over the years, about other
voting system proposals.

Notice, if Aaron had simply written his last sentence, his comment
would have been purely excellent. Indeed, the only way I could have
criticized it would be a very general idea that we will do better if
the RCV comments don't become an extensive back-and-forth. I'll
repeat that sentence here:

>It's remarkable how much gain there is from Approval Voting just by
>letting voters pick as many candidates as they want

That's simple and to the point. It is where our real and deep
consensus lies. Approval isn't perfect, it is a *gain*, and there are
many ways we can communicate this. I summarized it as something that
should be a no-brainer:

Count All the Votes.

Most people think that this is already what we do. They simply have
not realized where we don't. That slogan, by the way, covers RCV,
which generally does *not* count all the votes because the IRV
canvassing method is used, which sets aside and disregards some of the votes.

[Michael Ossipoff]

 

I assume that the way we vote is to click on the "thumbs up" icon, for the video (as I did)?

 

So far I've clicked "thumbs up" only for the Approval video. I won't cliick an additional one unless there's reason to believe that Approval won't win, and that the other video will win $100,000 for an organization that will accomplish something else that is important too, such as verifiable vote-counting.

 

If there's another way of voting, jother than clicking the "thumbs up" icon, I didn't find it.

 

Michael Ossipoff. 

[Dale Sheldon-Hess]

On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 9:42 AM, Michael Ossipoff <email9...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I assume that the way we vote is to click on the "thumbs up" icon, for the
> video (as I did)?

No, you vote by clicking on the big red button to the right of the
video that says "Vote".

--
Dale

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 11:15 PM 5/7/2013, Clay Shentrup wrote:
>We need your votes! You can sign in with Facebook or Github.
>
>The current top 10 are:
>Solutions To Strengthening America's Democracy / 158
>Civic Hacking in Pursuit of Democracy / 119
>Dear Democracy… / 97
>Bring It to The Table / 92
>Spin / 73
>DIVE IN: This is What Democracy Looks Like / 64
>Exciting / 61
>Carrots and Sticks for Democracy / 60
>Agenda Setters / 55
>Democracy is US! / 50

So, how are voter finding what to vote for out of
375 videos? I think it's probably networks of
friends. In other words, most of the voters have
an a priori bias. Most voters have not even seen
our video. This is a structural defect in the process.

Another problem is that we don't know the total
number of voters. That's important! If nearly
everyone is bullet voting, we can readily guess
that they are partisans. I'm pretty sure there is
more than one very good video in there! Ours is one, of course.

But is there a systemic bias other than this?

There are three sorts from the main page: Name, Recent, Comments.

Name is alphabetical. One of the top ten is in
that first screen of 30/375 videos. Agenda Setters.

Recent is probably a reverse date sort, so that
someone who wants to at least see all the videos
and who has been following the site can see
what's been added. And one video from Recent is in the top 10, DIVE IN.

Comments is obviously based on comments, but
exactly how isn't clear. Most web sites would
give a priority to the most recent comments. In
any case, we are at the top at this moment on
Comments. If this is quickly see as us talking
about our own video, this could backfire, but it
*is* getting our image up there, or it would have
been completely buried in the pile of 375.

In the first screen for Comments, I find

Our video first.
Carrots and Sticks for Democracy.
Agenda Setters
Spin
Dear Democracy
Civic Hacking
DIVE IN

(I also notice that the MN FairVote video is now
visible in the Comments first screen. *We created
that* by commenting there. Remember, bad
publicity is better than no publicity, and what
doesn't kill you makes you stronger....)

So, what do I get from this? Well, that 30/375
shows very less than 1/10 videos. We might expect
to see roughly one from chance. However, I'd also
expect the default screen, especially, for
readers, to attract more actual viewers and
therefore more approvals. All this can lead to
strategies to give one's video a leg up.
Possibly, upload it just before the deadline,
just enough time to allow for something to go
wrong and fix it. Slightly risky, then. Our video
could have been called A is for Approval. Would
have been top. They *could* decide to, next time,
reverse the order.... probably not.

(The best thing they could do is to accumulate
range ratings for each page, from upload. If they
did that, optimal strategy would be to get one's
video up sooner, you'd actually get rated by more
people because you would be seen by more people.
Or they could simply start voting as they did,
and could have a display that presents videos in
sequence of average rating. And a button that
jumps to random video as well, or "trending,"
etc. I would think that *their goals* would be
best served by encouraging every video to be seen
by as many people as possible....)

Are Comments (simply the number of comments,
without voters even looking at the actual
comments) driving votes, or are motivated voters
driving comments? 7/10 of the top ten are also on
the Comments first screen. That's a strong correlation. Cause?

Carrots and Sticks for Democracy is also awful as
to content. It's about treating politicians as
objects to be manipulated by "carrots and
sticks," and it's similar, then, to the proposal
prominent in #1 to fine politicians for "not
keeping campaign promises," never mind that this
would then set up a conflict between an oath of
office and personal interest, wherever it became
clear to the politician, *in context*, that his
duty required something other than what he
promised. I.e., it would remove the deliberation
from our deliberative democracy, and push it toward mob rule.

One of the *best* features of our democracy is
that demagogues can break their promises!

The solutions proposed are actually worse than
the problems. That's common when people think and
speak from *outside a system.* They have no
*personal relationship* with politicians, nor do
the politicians have a personal relationship with
them. The scale is too large for such
relationships to be anything other than very
unusual. And that's why Asset, blah, blah, blah.

I'll know that we are really cooking with gas
when our video is "A is for Asset Voting."

Until then, we have a no-brainer improvement that
can, in principle, improve any other voting
system *including IRV.* (i.e, simply allow
approval voting within each rank, and a *ballot*
is not exhausted at a rank until or unless *all
approvals at that rank have been eliminated. It's
still IRV and most people might vote it as IRV,
but it is *also* Approval and could be voted as
pure approval, or pure approval with fallback
votes. Better method than raw IRV. Flawed, *but
the flaws can be ameliorated by how the voters vote.*)

Of the top eight as to comments, four are in the
top ten as to voting. The exceptions are
Our video
http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/14935-the-united-states-needs-approval-voting
Mostly our comments, some others.
http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/15135-myvotenow-org
Look like independent comments, short comments.
http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/15178-the-american-walrus-party
Appear to be the comments of college friends. Satire.
http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/14527-governmental
Comments very short, possibly social circle,
video is platitudes, mostly. Very young, high school or younger.

So, from the top 10:
http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/15084-carrots-and-sticks-for-democracy
Comments appear to be from the general
public. Comments brief, but longer than the
"social" comments, and show real interest.
http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/14839-agenda-setters
Comments are lengthier, appear independent,
mostly. Reading them, I'm interested in seeing
the video. It seems to be about a Votorola-type
proposal, but where they go with it will be important.
http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/14184-spin
Short compliment comments. Spin is again a Votorola type proposal.
http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/15175-dive-in-this-is-what-democracy-looks-like
Substantive comments, longer, that don't
appear to have been made by the makers of the
video. Again, seeing the comments, I want to see the video.

Something we can learn from this? I do have some ideas....

A little more:
http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/14932-solutions-to-strengthening-america-s-democracy
is the number one in votes, 158 reported. It
has *one* comment that *resulted* from it being
number one. So it got those votes without
*anything* on the site driving viewers to it.

This video is from a person who made three submissions.
http://challengepost.com/users/trjr/submissions

Frankly, I don't see any reason why this video
would be so well-known, just from the site..
I.e., suppose it is *really excellent* (remember,
I haven't seen it yet.) That still would not
explain the rapid jump into the lead. Two
possibilities: external mention in some place
seen by a lot of people, or socking. The former
is legitimate, but it may also burn out. (I.e., not continue to increase.)

Being in the top ten will almost certainly lead
to more views and thus some increased level of
voting. To avoid misleading cascades, they should
probably list the top ten, if they are going to
announce it at all, in reverse order with links.
I'd suggest something quite different.

Hah! They need systems that are probably covered
by submissions, to some degree. That is, if they
really want a true public choice, rather than the
public following accidental cues and
manipulation, they need a more efficient and
thorough evaluation as part of a deliberative process.

Really! Voting systems people, what do you think
of an election that presents, with no
prefiltering, 375 candidates? 3 minute videos, 19
hours to look at all of them. Ain't gonna happen,
my guess is *nobody* will do this. Approval is
much better than Plurality, but .... a
single-stage process is very likely to produce suboptimal results.

https://www.facebook.com/LookingAtDemocracy?group_id=0
Looking at Democracy has a Facebook page and
some videos have been linked from there by
commentors. Carrots and Sticks is listed there.
Bring it to the Table is in the top ten and there
is a solicitation for votes there. (The 92 votes
it had at last canvass -- this system isn't
real-time -- wasn't caused by the mention on that
Facebook page, because it mentions that standing.)

Chatting up the video and the contest in various
fora is apparently legitimate, and is probably what they want to happen.

[Michael Ossipoff]

Sure, but when I did that, all it did was take me back to the screen where the video plays, or maybe it was the screen from which I can search for a video. Anyway, it didn't take me to a voting screen. I'll try again. Oh well, I've still got 7 days :-)

 

 

--
Dale

[Michael Ossipoff]

On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 12:48 AM, Michael Ossipoff

<email9...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Wednesday, May 8, 2013 1:46:56 PM UTC-4, Dale Sheldon-Hess wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 9:42 AM, Michael Ossipoff <email9...@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> >
>> > I assume that the way we vote is to click on the "thumbs up" icon, for
>> > the
>> > video (as I did)?
>>
>> No, you vote by clicking on the big red button to the right of the video
>> that says "Vote".

The "vote" button that I'd noticed was at the top of the initial
screen from which you can search for a video. I didn't notice a button
to the right of the video. But of course I'll check again, in case
it's there and I missed it.

[Clay Shentrup]

On Wednesday, May 8, 2013 11:03:52 PM UTC-7, Michael Ossipoff wrote:

The "vote" button that I'd noticed was at the top of the initial
screen from which you can search for a video. I didn't notice a button
to the right of the video. But of course I'll check again, in case
it's there and I missed it.

 I'm not sure how you're missing this huge button. See attached image.

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

It's been obvious from the beginning that Michael *might* be looking
at the wrong page. Maybe, maybe not. For some very strange reason --
probably no reason at all -- nobody has given him excruciatingly
explicit directions. And if anyone else is having trouble, those will
be helpful to them as well.

Folks, I know it's a bit more trouble, but whenever possible *give
explicit links.* Even though I've voted and I know what to do, I now
have to do quite a bit more than just click on a link that's been
helpfully provided to me by previous writers. ... grumble, grumble!!!!

When generating help for someone like this, I need to understand that
what I see when I'm logged in to a site may be different than what
someone else sees.

I'm documenting the process. You don't need to follow it. I give the
direct link to the page that allows voting.

http://lookingatdemocracy.org/

And I logged out.

And I see what Mike reported: A big red button "Vote on the submissions."

So I clicked on it:

I get a screen with the submissions in alphabetical order. Horrible.
375 of them. So I choose, in the pull-down under "Sort", Comments. I
know that one will pull up our video.

http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&terms=&sort=comment

goes directly to the comment sort. My, my, our video has dropped to
number three! The Walrus Party is beating the pants off of us! (Not
really, and it's useful if we stay in the top ten, though most people
won't even look at this sort screen, it does have many of the top ten
vote-getters so far.)

http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/14935-the-united-states-needs-approval-voting
is, then, a direct link to our video. To the right of the screen view
is a big red button, "Vote."

Now, I don't want to add an additional vote, but I strongly suspect
that it will not let me vote unless I'm logged in. So, taking a risk
that I'll have to send an email to the organizers that there is a
bug, I press the button.

I get a log-in screen. It allows the use of a Github or Facebook
account. Myself, I created a direct account. It will require, as I
recall, email confirmation. And, again as I recall, if I follow the
screens through and confirm, it then thanks me for voting.

If you are careful and check before moving on from a screen, and you
have not been presented with a vote acknowledgement, you have
probably not voted. Below I confirm this. It's even simpler.

Going back to the video page. I see the red "Vote" button. So I log
in. Now I see, in the place of it,

"Thanks for voting."

Basically, if you are logged in, the system does not let you vote
twice. And you can tell if you voted.

If you created an account and *might* have voted, but missed it, do
*not* create a new account. You'll need to know the email account you
used. I *always* keep acknowledgement mails because I have quite a
few email accounts. As long as you have access to that account, the
system will allow password recovery if you have lost it. Creating a
new account, if you accidentally add a second vote with it, can and
probably will be detected by them, and they have threatened to
disqualify entries because of additional voting. So *please* don't
say to yourself, "Aw, I don't remember the password so I'll just make
a new account and make sure I've voted." It could cause damage.

[Michael Ossipoff]

On Wednesday, May 8, 2013 1:46:56 PM UTC-4, Dale Sheldon-Hess wrote:

Wrong. On my computer, there is definitely no "big red button to the right of the vide that says 'vote' ".

 

Nor is there a "Vote" button anywhere on the screen. Not to the right of the video. Not to the left of the video. Now above the video. Not below the video. Not diagonal to the video.

 

However, I clicked the "thumbs-up" icon, which was all that the screen offered. 

 

Michael Ossipoff

 

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

I provided complete instructions on voting, with explicit links and
addressed possible problems, seeing that Michael had said he was
having troube before. However, Michael may not have seen my post, and
I don't see that anyone else echoed it for his benefit. I started to
write another post to ask for that echo, but, too late. The way I see
some of his posts, I don't necessarily see them quickly.

Voting closed at May 16, 3 PM EDT, so Michael waited till almost too
late to ask. His post was timestamped Thu, 16 May 2013 08:16:01 -0700
(PDT), which is 11:16 AM EDT. It is now too late.

If someone had answered him immediately, he might still have been
able to vote. I'm suspecting that too many people are filtering him
out. Or not taking the trouble to understand what he writes.

He may not see this unless someone he is not filtering out echoes
this. If anyone thinks he should see it, echo it with a comment.
Otherwise, water under the bridge, entirely. One vote may make a difference.

Comments on the page are still open. If there is no "Post a comment"
red button at the bottom, this is probably not the Looking at
Democracy page, it could be the youtube page. Michael never told us
what URL he was looking at, something that would have taken seconds.
Not providing links, when it would be easy, is a common shortcoming
in many of our posts.

He wrote "not on my computer," but not "on this page [URL]." So
*maybe* it was his browser, but then he didn't tell us, either, what
browser he was using. He's making a lot of assumptions; Michael has
been around a long time, I'd think he'd know better, but maybe not.

There are (at least) three web pages where the video is found.
http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/14935-the-united-states-needs-approval-voting
*was* the voting page. Voting now closed.
http://www.electology.org/plurality-attack is the CES embedded video.
It does have a thumbs up -- and a Facebook "like" button --, so
Michael may have been looking at this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db6Syys2fmE is the Youtube page. It
also has a "like" button.

I explained all this before, though I only gave the
lookingatdemocracy link. Shame.

A very minor possibility is that he was looking at the right page,
but was using an quite obsolete browser. Very unlikely, but not
impossible. I think he'd still have seen the button, unless the
browser was so old that he'd have *lots* of problems with web pages.

(There are 53 "Likes" there and 3 thumbs down. Warren, did you vote
three times? :-)

Just kidding.

The LAD web site has 122 "likes" for our video. That compares with
the "Solutions" video that I love so much (not!) with 73 likes.
Obviously, something is a little wacky compared with the 423 votes
for "Solutions."

http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/14932-solutions-to-strengthening-america-s-democracy

I looked at some other videos in the top ten as to votes four days
ago. (We didn't make that list. They have not updated it to the final voting.)

http://lookingatdemocracy.org/updates/886

Agenda Setters / 156 Votes, 198 Likes.
http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/14184-spin
Spin / 156 votes also!, 184 Likes.
http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/14839-agenda-setters
Carrots and Sticks for Democracy / 146 Votes, 254 Likes.
http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/15084-carrots-and-sticks-for-democracy

Of these I have only watched the Submissions video (awful!), Carrots
and Sticks (not so bad), and Spin (decent idea).

The lowest vote-getter (in the top ten) as of that update was

DIVE IN: This Is What Democracy Looks Like / 114 Votes, 89 likes.
http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/15175-dive-in-this-is-what-democracy-looks-like

Likes and votes definitely correlate for most of the videos where I
looked. So, now, I look at the high vote ones:

1. Solutions for Strengthening America's Democracy / 423 Votes, 73
Likes, linked above.
2. Dear Congress, Invest in Us. / 401 Votes, 818 Likes.
http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/15171-dear-congress-invest-in-us
3. Video: Civic Hacking in Pursuit of Democracy / 174 Votes, 72
Likes. 72 Likes.

Solutions stands out like a sore thumb. I could also look at the
youtube versions and see what Likes are there, but I'll let someone
else do that, if they are inclined. Fascinating. The judges will have
access to IP and User Agent data, I assume, as well as IP location
data and vote timing. They might or might not look for open proxy
usage. That would take a higher level of sophistication (both for
vote fraudsters and the skills available to the judges.) This is all
stuff that WikiMedia Foundation checkusers do. I"ve seen them make
mistakes. But it's not normal.

[Clay Shentrup]

On Thursday, May 9, 2013 6:57:10 AM UTC-7, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:

It's been obvious from the beginning that Michael *might* be looking
at the wrong page. Maybe, maybe not. For some very strange reason --
probably no reason at all -- nobody has given him excruciatingly
explicit directions.

Um, hello? This thread started with the direct link to our entry:

http://lookingatdemocracy.org/submissions/14935-the-united-states-needs-approval-voting

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

What is "this thread"? Believe it or not, it could have different meanings.

The subject header can define it, and I wrote the original thread in
this one ("*Exactly* how to vote ....") who was having problems. Mike
probably does not read what I write, at all. But I hoped he would see
the subject header. If he saw it, he ignored it.

However, googlegroups displays posts under a thread, using header information.

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/electionscience/XPsjqIfpigc

Michael may simply be reading the posts in a mail reader. I changed
the subject header but Google still keeps it together, because the
post was written as a reply. Google's system of sending out message
numbers as part of the header screws up the ability to sort headers
in mail programs.... A sort on Subject simply returns a sort by
message number, i.e, by date....

Michael was obviously looking at the wrong page. Even though the
correct link was at the top of the thread, that may not do you any
good if you are only looking at current emails and Michael's computer
usage has never been throughly informed. Not his field....

I've been saying, Clay, that when we are trying to help people, given
them direct links. It doesn't harm to be redundant. Don't assume they
have them from former mails. Somehow Michael had found our video, it
*was* our video, and so he kept looking back at the same page,
thinking that this was it. At least I think that was the cause of his
confusion.

Michael complained again and again. I was the only one who bothered
to provide a direct link, and I did more than that. I gave detailed
information on how to vote. You can't just navigate to the page and
vote! Unless you have an account and have logged in. Michael showed
no awareness of all this. The tragedy is that I'd provided him
complete information days before, but Michael doesn't read my mail,
and nobody echoed it. (He'll probably see what someone else echoes.)
He then complained on the last day of voting and I didn't see it
until too late.

Michael complained May 8 and May 9 that he couldn't vote.

Clay, you responded May 9 with a screen shot showing the vote button.
No link to the page, and, Clay, this is common. You don't seem to
realize that peole can't follow up or check what you write without a
link. This was useless to Michael. He *knows* what a red button looks like.

Seeing that, I responded May 9 with the post with a new subject
header "*Exactly* how to vote ....

If you had responded to my post with a "Thank you" or something,
Michael would have seen it.

May 16, Michael wrote "Wrong," apparently replying to you. I.e., he
didn't see that button. Now, I checked. When he wrote, voting was
still open, so ... he was still looking at the wrong page, almost
certainly. And nobody responded to him in time.

So, yes, the link was at the top of the thread. Mike may have no clue
as to how to see that. Most people don't read this list on
googlegroups. Michael probably reads it in gmail. Don't know how that
looks, how it threads the mail. Dale responded to him about the
button, but gave no link. Both you and Dale seemed to assume that
Michael was blind or something.

So now you come, May 17, and tell us that the link is at the top of
the thread, and you give the link. A day too late. As if I was being
silly, though that was a response to my message of May 9. When it
might have helped him.

"nobody has given him excruciatingly explicit directions" meant that
nobody had done that after Michael repeatedly complained that he
couldn't see a Vote button. You *did* originally provide a link,
Clay, but it became very obvious he wasn't there.

[Michael Ossipoff]

 

Clay:

That's where I was. I went to the looklingatdemocracy.org website, selected "submission gallery", and then, using the search-facility provided, searched for "Approvl Voting". That took ;me to the CES Approval video--but without a "Vote" button.

 

True, I didn't use that link, but I went to the same website, and the same part of that website, that the link links to.

 

Michael Ossipoff