Social-choice theories and simple common sense (re: IRV, LNH, ‘strategic [bullet] voting,’ etc.):

[George Sanders]

I wonder if our social-choice theories might be more effective in making helpful changes to our society if one could explain them in more simple, common-sense descriptions so that most people can better understand their importance. So here I’ll try to explain my simple thinking on some current topics that we at CES seem to be wrestling with:

Regarding our ongoing ‘problem’ with IRV:

I have always thought that IRV may be a bit better than plurality, but all that it really does when it comes into play is to force a so called "majority winner” by upgrading to first place all the 2nd choices of the voters who voted for THE CANDIDATE WHO GOT THE LEAST 1^ST-PLACE VOTES--THE VERY CANDIDATE THAT FAIRVOTE THINKS WAS THE WORST CANDIDATE! In other words, if Osama Bin Laden were on the ballot in IRV and got the least IRV votes here in America, then his supporters' 2nd choices would now be competing fully & directly with all the other first-place choices to try to force a majority winner. Does anyone think THIS is a good idea?

And IRV does NOT protect against a pair of polarizing demagogues from beating a well rounded third candidate who was everyone's close 2nd choice but who got no votes! Actually, it is the very nature of Approval Voting’s and Score Voting’s betrayal of “later-no-harm” that really does the most good--insofar as this ‘betrayal’ provides the potential for [my words] “later something better” for the collective society by raising the overall value of well-regarded-but-non-first-place candidates so that polarizing demagogues are more likely to lose to the candidates who have this broader overall support of the electorate. Which is how I would dispute the particular Fairvote claim that “…approval voting's practical flaw…[is] not allowing voters to support a second choice without potentially causing the defeat of their first choice.”  

Also, I've heard claims that Approval and Score would lead to the ‘strategy’ of bullet voting--thereby negating their efficacy as nothing better than plurality, and also that “such voting methods have their potential value, but only in elections where voters have no particular stake in the outcome.” I heartily disagree, and, to further elucidate my point, I’ll end here with an Op-Ed that I recently sent to the New York Times: 

[subject] Regarding partisan politics and government gridlock: 

An Immodest  Proposal

Suppose that when our country was founded,  the prescribed voting method that we used was Approval Voting—where you could approve of as many candidates for an office as you like. There would be no political parties needed to eliminate ‘spoilers’ who detract from one another’s vote totals, many more candidates would be running on their own platforms and owe their allegiance directly to US, big-money donations would have less direct effect (too many candidates to ‘bribe’), gerrymandering would be unheard of (no political parties, and a large field of independent candidates would be impossible to gerrymander against), and more people would vote and have more faith in their elected officials--who would be able to legislate better and quicker using approval voting in their procedures to select the most-approved parts of lots of bills on the same subject.

 But what if now some politician comes along and says, “Oh no, no!--we can’t allow You, the People, to vote for ALL the candidates you might approve of for an office, you hafta tell us just your one-and-only favorite (even if you like two candidates equally), and if he or she doesn’t win, then it’s just too bad for you--you’ll get no input into selecting anyone from the remaining pack.

WOULD WE PUT UP WITH THIS FOR AN INSTANT?!? …and, if not, then why are We, the People, putting up with it NOW?? 

George Sanders (a Simon & Schuster children’s author)
Contributor, The Center for Election Science
Geo...@VotingInSanity.org
www.VotingInSanity.org
a 3-minute discourse on just why we have partisan politics, and the simplest and best way we can seriously mitigate it à https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4LqypgNIOw  

[Michael Ossipoff]

I guess what I've been trying to say is that Approval advocates and
IRV advocates have been exaggerating too much, in criticizing
eachother's proposals.

Each is better than the other under certain conditions (I've tallked
about those conditions), though Approval is good under all condiions,.

On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 10:57 PM, George Sanders <geov...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Regarding our ongoing ‘problem’ with IRV:
>
> I have always thought that IRV may be a bit better than plurality, but all
> that it really does when it comes into play is to force a so called
> "majority winner” by upgrading to first place all the 2nd choices of the
> voters who voted for THE CANDIDATE WHO GOT THE LEAST 1ST-PLACE VOTES--THE
> VERY CANDIDATE THAT FAIRVOTE THINKS WAS THE WORST CANDIDATE!

The fact that you like the least favorite candidate shouldn't
disenfranchise you regarding the other candidates. You can stlll be
part of a mutual majority, and mutual majorities should be respected,
as IRV does. Mutual majorities support eachother's candidates. If the
method meets MMC, and if the MM vote sincerely, then one of their
MM-preferred candidates will win.

> In other words,
> if Osama Bin Laden were on the ballot in IRV and got the least IRV votes
> here in America, then his supporters' 2nd choices would now be competing
> fully & directly with all the other first-place choices to try to force a
> majority winner. Does anyone think THIS is a good idea?

The candidate whom you name isn't a U.S. citizen, which would
disqualify him from running for office in the U.S. --and might not
even still be alive. Could we just include actual U.S. candidates and
parties in these discussions, rather than terrorist enemies?

If your favorite is one of the parties designated by the media as a
minor party (but--like all actual U.S. parties-- is not a terrorist
organization), then you're implying that that party's supporters
shouldn't be allowed to be counted in their preferences among parties
that are perceived to be more winnable. That's a very extreme
position, and one that can only be argued for by the deceptive tactic
of substituting a terrorist organization for a small party, in your
"example".

> And IRV does NOT protect against a pair of polarizing demagogues from
> beating a well rounded third candidate who was everyone's close 2nd choice
> but who got no votes!

That middle candidate might or might not be the CW. If not, there's no
important reason or justification to violate majority rule to elect
hir. If s/he is the vote CW, then Benham and Woodall will elect hir.
But i've told why isn't necessarily essential to elect CWs. And
remember that, though Approval tends to elect CWs, Approval doesn't
meet the Condorcet Criterion.

You speak of two extreme, polarizing demagogues. But that isn't the
structure of our political system. We have two media-promoted,
media-permitted, parties, which are so nearly identical that they're
more accurately described as one party with two right wings (quoted
from Gore Vidal).

Those two parties aren't at the two extremes. They're both the same extreme.

And if no one considers your example's middle candidate their
favorite, then any majority that prefer hir to someone else probably
also prefer someone else to hir. I'd say that s/he probably doesn't
have a strong claim to winning.

> Actually, it is the very nature of Approval Voting’s
> and Score Voting’s betrayal of “later-no-harm” that really does the most
> good--insofar as this ‘betrayal’ provides the potential for [my words]
> “later something better” for the collective society by raising the overall
> value of well-regarded-but-non-first-place candidates so that polarizing
> demagogues are more likely to lose to the candidates who have this broader
> overall support of the electorate.

It's true that IRV's sometime elimination of CWs can elect a more
extreme candidate, but only if that candidate is the next choice of
the eliminaated Cw's preferrers. You're forgetting that.

Very few methods meet LNHa, and I agree that it's too demanding to be
used as a requirement. But let's not try to make LNHa failure into a
virtue.

If you're arguing that IRV isn't good for current conditions, then I
agree. IRV isn't good for current conditions because, like Beatpath
("Schulze"), IRV fails FBC. But there's no need to exaggerate IRV's
failings, or to conclude that, just because it's no good for current
conditions, that makes it no good for anything. IRV is good for the
conditions of the Green scenario. Those are the conditions under which
IRV woudl be enacted.

> Which is how I would dispute the
> particular Fairvote claim that “…approval voting's practical flaw…[is] not
> allowing voters to support a second choice without potentially causing the
> defeat of their first choice.”

I'm sorry to say something that is unpopular at ths forum, but
FairVote is right when they cite that disadvantage of Approval. You
speak of polarizing. Let's not polarize ourselves into two camps, each
of which exaggeratedly attacks what they don't advocate.

It's easy to tell of two kinds of situations in which IRV's MMC
compliance is an advantage over Approval:

1. There aren't unacceptable candidates who could win, but there are
still candidate who are unliked enough to justify maybe supporting a
compromise to beat them. Do you support the compromise, even though
that could defeat the really good candidate(s)? Approval has that
dilemma, and it doesn't do any good to try to deny it.

2. There are unacceptable canddiates who could win. That makes
Approval strategy easy: Approve the acceptables, and none of the
unacceptables.

Fine, but when you approve all of the acceptables, you aren't making a
choice between them. You don't get to. That's ok, because at least
you're doing your best to elect an acceptable. Then, maybe in
subsequent elections, when the acceptables are establislhed as
winners, you could use the reported approval-totals to judge whether
you could afford to withdraw support from a compromise acceptble and
only support your real favorite(s). And, if there's a chicken dilemma,
then you could probabilistically give only partial support to
Compromise (but how many will do that?).

Sure, you oculd do that with Approval. Eventually, you might elect
someone better than Compromise, but it migh take a number of
elections. The nice thing about IRV, Benham and Woodall is that that
can happen a lot sooner. You (with the rest of your mutual majority)
can guarantee the election of one of your MM-preferred candidates,
merely by ranking all of them over the others. You can do that while
also voting _among_ those MM-preferred candidates. That's a powerful
advantage, one that Approvalists want to ignore.

With IRV, Benham, Woodall, or Schwartz Woodall, therefore, majority
rule for a mutual majority (and for all majorities if the method is
Benham or Woodall) will be _immediately_ enforced. No need the
strategic guesses that Approval needs.

That's for the Green scenario. For now, yes Approval and Score are
better. For now, under current conditions, IRV is entirely inadequate,
due to its FBC failure. But you deny that IRV is any good at all, and,
in that, you're mistaken. By that exaggerted criticism of IRV, you're,
by implication, unfairly criticizing the (at least) four national
political parties that offer IRV in their platforms. That's not
helpful. It's counterproductive.

Criticize IRV for current conditiions. I do. But let's not go
overboard with exaggeration about rival proposals, with IRV advocates
and Approval advocates quite unnecessarily fighting eachother.

> Also, I've heard claims that Approval and Score would lead to the ‘strategy’
> of bullet voting--thereby negating their efficacy as nothing better than
> plurality

Of course that FairVote criticism of approval is obvious nonsense. As
I've said, FairVote is an embarrassment to IRV.

Michael Ossipoff

[Warren D Smith]

GS makes an interesting point that in IRV, your "vote gets counted
more often" if you
prefer to vote for losing candidates. Thus the "stupider" voters for
"Osama bin Laden" have "more power" which is presumably bad.

This story makes sense intuitively, but can it be backed up with
anything more solid?
The computer simulations I used to do did not really have the concept
of "stupider" and
"smarter" (or "more morally correct" or whatever you want to call it)
voters, they instead
just had concepts of random voters, or of geometrically defined
voters. And I'm not sure
how such "stupidity" should be modeled. Another problem is, suppose
you are actually a way smarter voter than almost everybody, hence you
vote for the smart candidate who
unfortunately has little support. Then he loses, so your vote gets
used again. Notice, in this alternate story, the smarter voters get
to re-vote, which is presumably good.

So, maybe GS had the wrong story. Maybe a more accurate story is the "unusual"
voters have more power. This would somewhat explain the observed
fact that IRV is biased in favor of extremist candidates (and against
"centrists") e.g. see
http://rangevoting.org/Extremism.html



--
Warren D. Smith
http://RangeVoting.org <-- add your endorsement (by clicking
"endorse" as 1st step)

[Warren D Smith]

[Eric Sanders]

I think Warren makes a great point:

So, maybe GS had the wrong story.  Maybe a more accurate story is the "unusual" 
voters have more power.   This would somewhat explain the observed 
fact that IRV is biased in favor of extremist candidates (and against 
"centrists") e.g. see 
    http://rangevoting.org/Extremism.html 

In IRV, the influence of 'outlier' voters is disproportionately weighted towards the outcome.

[Jameson Quinn]

Note that what Warren is calling an "observed fact" here is based on simulations. In the real world, voters may overcompensate for a system's tendencies, so an apparently extremist system (like plurality) can end up with boring winners (ie, the "Republocrat" thesis).

2013/5/14 Eric Sanders <er...@electology.org>

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[Michael Ossipoff]

Tue, May 14, 2013 at 3:11 PM, Jameson Quinn <jameso...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Note that what Warren is calling an "observed fact" here is based on
> simulations. In the real world, voters may overcompensate for a system's
> tendencies, so an apparently extremist system (like plurality) can end up
> with boring winners (ie, the "Republocrat" thesis).

We're used to that in our public political elections, and so it would
be easy to believe that it's univeral problem. But that lesser-evil
giveaway problem is due to a remarkably pathological and abnormal
media system. By "abnormal", I don't mean uncommon in the world at
present.

It's what I refer to as "current conditions". Without those
pathological conditions, I wouldn't expect a problem with lesser-evil
favorite-bural.

But yes, under current conditions, FBC is needed to avoid the
disinformational-media-induced overcompensation of lesser-evil
giveaway.

In other conditions, anyone who believes their policy preferences to
be the best ls likely to believe that a majority might think so too,
and support eachother's candidates. In other words, that person might
expect to be in a mutual majority. Especially when it's true. Without
disinformational media that everyone believes, IRV would therefore be
a fine method, with its MMC compliance and freedom from the chicken
dilemma. IRV's Condorcet hybrids additionally bring Condorcet
Criterion compliance, for better lasting power as the public voting
system (no dis-satisfied majorities).

Michael Ossipoff

[Warren D Smith]

On 5/14/13, Jameson Quinn <jameso...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Note that what Warren is calling an "observed fact" here is based on
> simulations.

--well, let's say it's a mathematical fact. I mean, I put 14 points
in a square, call them
"candidates" in an "issue space" then run IRV with honest voters and
see what happens.
Anybody can do it, and the "extremists" clearly and reproducibly have
a big advantage.

Now what is not currently clear, is why. Maybe it is Sanders'
effect. But plain
plurality voting also is extremist-biased, and so the reason might be
just that IRV is
based on plurality. Or some combination of that with Sanders' effect.
Or some other reasons. It seems obvious that adding a 2-man runoff
second stage to essentially any voting method, is going to make it
less-extremist. (Since
the less-extreme among the top 2 finishers will win.)
IRV is sort of an approximation to doing that, so you might think it
will be more pro-centrist than plain plurality... but if so this
evidently is not
enough to overcome plurality's pro-extremist bias...

[Dale Sheldon-Hess]

On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 11:11 AM, Jameson Quinn <jameso...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Note that what Warren is calling an "observed fact" here is based on
> simulations. In the real world, voters may overcompensate for a system's
> tendencies, so an apparently extremist system (like plurality) can end up
> with boring winners (ie, the "Republocrat" thesis).

I realize I might be in a minority here, since I actually see quite a
bit of distance between the typical Republican candidate and the
typical Democratic candidate (and their respective parties). Not on
all issues, of course, but on several substantive ones. And America's
voting age population seems to agree--call them dupes or call them
uninformed if you must, but that does seem to be their honestly held
opinion. And it is also a commonly-held apparently-honest belief of
something over 50% of voters for a candidate more-liberal than the
typical Republican and more-conservative than the typical Democrat to
win (most of whom still vote for one or the other anyway.)

With that in mind, I propose that the apparently-extremist system of
plurality is, in fact, extremist. Not exceedingly so, since, if the
parties were to conspire on their political positioning (and if
politics could always be construed along a single one-dimensional
spectrum) they could push it as far as 66% who want a more-moderate
candidate and still guarantee no such more-moderate candidate would
ever win.

IRV is, in the limit, somewhat less extremes-biased than plurality (a
two-party conspiracy could not push beyond 50% and still guarantee
victory over any single 3rd party candidate.) So IRV should tend to
push candidates slightly toward the center compared to the current
environment.

Approval (as well as Condorcet methods) are, of course, even better,
since under the same theoretical framework they always elect the
candidate closest to the center, so parties can't push beyond 0%
without giving up a guarantee of victory; only the most-moderate
candidate will ever be able to win.

If someone truly believed that there was no difference between the two
current major parties (am I correct that that's part of the
"Republicrat thesis"?) and that approval could help ameliorate that
problem, then I think they must also believe either that politics is
significantly non-one-dimensional, or (equivalently?) that there are
one or major important issues that split voters but which are given no
time because "both sides" agree on it (or agree to ignore it
entirely.)

I think politics is mostly one-dimensional (that is, _most_ of the
variation for _most_ voters can be explained by one variable, which we
typical call the liberal/conservative axis) and I think evidence
supports that view. And while there are ignored issues, I think they
are ignored because most voters don't care enough about them
intrinsically, not because plurality politics is holding them back
from expressing an opinion. (This has not always been the case.
Slavery was the most important issue of its day, but the Whigs and
Democrats both ignored it, to the whole nation's (but especially the
Whig party's) detriment.)

I'm curious if others also think politics is mostly one-dimensional
(and therefore there is "space" between the Ds and Rs), or that major
voter-splitting issues are out there being ignored (and the Ds and Rs
are "mostly the same"), or if there's some other possibility I've
missed.

--
Dale Sheldon-Hess

[Warren D Smith]

The pro-extremist nature of plurality voting is pretty irrelevant to
present USA because there are only 2 (or only 1) candidates with a
chance to win. My Yee pictures showing extremist bias involved 14
candidates. (The France 2012 presidential election involved 12
candidates, in contrast, and about 5 of them could have won or come
close, at least with appropriate voting systems.) In the preceding
French election, Sarkozy won using plurality+runoff, whereas the
Condorcet winner was Bayrou (also score & approval winner). This would
be an example where the French system had a pro-extremist bias (in the
sense commentators regarded Bayrou as more centrist than Sarkozy).
[In the 2012 election Hollande was Condorcet, approval, score, and
GMJ, and official runoff, winner, so no difference.]

In a situation like USA now with only 2 contenders, there is an effect
causing convergence toward tweedledum/republocrats: both candidates
have advantage if move closer to voter-center.

However, there also is rampant gerrymandering in the USA. As an
example, the recent SC-1 congress race, won by former gov. Mark
Sanford over Elizabeth Colbert Busch...
what the press as usual failed to mention was the fact that a repub
has won that district every time since 1980. And before that, a
Democrat won every time since 1896.
Give me a break.

So anyway in most districts, including that district, there is no
"convergence" because there is no competition. The real race is the
republican primary. And in the primary, only a small percentage of
the available voters vote, enriched in Republican diehards. This means
that congressman does not give a damn what Democrats think of him, and
he has zero incentive to try to centralize to attract their votes.
The USA is more gerrymandered than ever before, and more polarized
congress than ever before.

[Dale Sheldon-Hess]

On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 3:29 PM, Warren D Smith <warre...@gmail.com> wrote:
> In a situation like USA now with only 2 contenders, there is an effect
> causing convergence toward tweedledum/republocrats: both candidates
> have advantage if move closer to voter-center.
>
> However, there also is rampant gerrymandering in the USA.

If two candidates really are tweedledum/tweedledee, would they not
also both be very close to the center of their district? And wouldn't
that be _okay_? And wouldn't approval tend to pick the same winner?

Convergence+Gerrymandering: That's a possibility I hadn't considered.
If this were the primary cause, then we would expect the candidates
from the few remaining swing districts to be very centrist; is that
the case?

And if candidates/parties are converging, and it's just gerrymandering
that makes the parties appear to have any distinction, then what
effect do we expect approval voting to have?

--
Dale

[Warren D Smith]

what I was saying is in USA today there are two COUNTERVAILING effects:
1. tweedledum caused by convergence
2. polarization caused by gerrymandering.

I think #2 is winning since most districts gerrymandered and since the evidence
about measuring polarization says all time high.

Would these be "okay"? No. I think BOTH tweedledum/convergence and
artificial polarization are BAD. I want to get rid of gerrymandering
and install
better voting systems that give us genuine market of choices, not just two.
If we somehow were to get rid of gerrymandering but keep 2-party domination,
then I think they'd probably just re-enact gerrymandering. So getting
rid of 2PD is
essential. That requires a better voting system. If you kept gerrymandering
then approval, IRV, etc would pretty much cause the same effects as
plurality IF the market kept being just 2 parties. So getting rid of
2PD is essential otherwise
voting system reform is nearly meaningless. IRV will not. Approval is
less likely to work that score.

[George Sanders]

My thoughts on how Approval or Score would ameliorate many of  our political problems--specifically here: “the lesser of two evils,” the “liberal-conservative” axis, gerrymandering, and proposing and passing legislation in general:

 In American two-party plurality politics, politicians HAVE TO win one of the two major parties in order to win (which means they have to patronize the party platform and ‘bosses’), for no voter wants to waste his one-and-only precious vote on any third-party candidate whom he thinks doesn’t stand a great chance of winning, so he’d better vote for one of the two major-party candidates (often, for the voter, the lesser of two evils) who Will be winning--a self-fulfilling prophesy for the top two parties if there ever was one! No wonder we at CES will get nowhere trying to exhort ‘politicians’ to try to change our inept voting system, for what politician wants to give up his 50% chance of getting himself re-elected by allowing for an increase in viable competitors. Of course, after the two major-party candidates win the extremists in their base, then they have to try to ‘walk it back’ (undo all those lies they’d told) in order to try to win over the moderates, centrists, and undecideds in order to win a majority over their one-and-only viable opponent. NO WONDER that We, the People think that politicians are liars and have the least regard for their morals and scruples!

 As far as a “single one-dimensional spectrum” (Dale Sheldon-Hess’s “liberal/conservative axis”), the very reason that we THINK of politics in these terms--left vs. right, liberal vs. conservative, Democrat vs. Republican--is BECAUSE we have a polarizing plurality method of voting that has forced politics into a two-party system BUT ALSO because our legislators USE this same yes/no voting method to pass or reject proposed bills--NO WONDER bills get watered down to try to squeak past a majority of legislators who might agree to vote for them, and no wonder that pork-barrel politics runs rampant when the final few legislator-holdouts are needed to be bribed to come on board(!). BUT (sorry for shouting again--can’t help being passionate about all this) IF we had Approval Voting, or, better yet, Score Voting, not only to elect our legislators but ALSO for our legislators to USE--to select the best parts of lots of proposed bills on the same subject (and without needing much, if any, pork along the way), THEN we [our legislators] could get legislation passed quickly and easily that would likely provide the greatest satisfaction to the most people possible. Interestingly and sadly,I was amazed to find out directly from Steven Brams not so long ago that he had actually written a paper called “Approval Voting on Bills and Legislation” [Penn State U. Press] back in 1995 that proposed how legislators could utilize Approval Voting to do basically what I described above (see http://www.jstor.org/stable/20710690?seq=1). I cannot imagine how frustrated Steve must feel as a wizened professional in the field whose wise words of wisdom were never heeded(!). And hence, our politics, and governance, will only become ‘three dimensional’ when We, the People, and our legislators, utilize a ‘three-dimensional’ voting method that has the capability of finding the best needle in a haystack of options instead of one from either side of a line.

 And if Warren’s Score Voting, or even Brams’ Approval Voting, were instituted, just think what it would do to undermine gerrymandering: When there is an increase in viable political contenders (who don’t need to patronize any private political party in order to get votes) who are now on a level playing field (oh yes, build it and they will come!), it will be too complicated to poll specific voter preferences in order to fit them into a left-right box [now non-existent] which can be gerrymandered for political gain.

[Warren D Smith]

> In American two-party plurality politics, politicians HAVE TO win one of
> the two major parties in order to win (which means they have to patronize
> the party platform and ‘bosses’), for no voter wants to waste his
> one-and-only precious vote on any third-party candidate whom he thinks
> doesn’t stand a great chance of winning, so he’d better vote for one of the
> two major-party candidates (often, for the voter, the lesser of two evils)
> who Will be winning--a self-fulfilling prophesy for the top two parties if
> there ever was one! No wonder we at CES will get nowhere trying to exhort
> ‘politicians’ to try to change our inept voting system, for what politician
> wants to give up his 50% chance of getting himself re-elected by allowing
> for an increase in viable competitors. Of course, after the two major-party
> candidates win the extremists in their base, then they have to try to ‘walk
> it back’ (undo all those lies they’d told) in order to try to win over the
> moderates, centrists, and undecideds in order to win a majority over their

> one-and-only viable opponent. NO WONDER that *We, the People* think that

> politicians are liars and have the least regard for their morals and
> scruples!
>
> As far as a “single one-dimensional spectrum” (Dale Sheldon-Hess’s
> “liberal/conservative axis”), the very reason that we THINK of politics in
> these terms--left vs. right, liberal vs. conservative, Democrat vs.
> Republican--is BECAUSE we have a polarizing plurality method of voting that
> has forced politics into a two-party system BUT ALSO because our
> legislators USE this same yes/no voting method to pass or reject proposed
> bills--NO WONDER bills get watered down to try to squeak past a majority of
> legislators who might agree to vote for them, and no wonder that
> pork-barrel politics runs rampant when the final few legislator-holdouts
> are needed to be bribed to come on board(!). BUT (sorry for shouting
> again--can’t help being passionate about all this) IF we had Approval

> Voting, or, better yet, *Score Voting*, not only to elect our legislators
> but ALSO for our legislators to USE--to select the best parts of *lots* of

> proposed bills on the same subject (and without needing much, if any, pork
> along the way), THEN we [our legislators] could get legislation passed
> quickly and easily that would likely provide the greatest satisfaction to
> the most people possible. Interestingly and sadly,I was amazed to find out
> directly from Steven Brams not so long ago that he had actually written a
> paper called “Approval Voting on Bills and Legislation” [Penn State U.
> Press] back in 1995 that proposed how legislators could utilize Approval
> Voting to do basically what I described above (see
> http://www.jstor.org/stable/20710690?seq=1). I cannot imagine how
> frustrated Steve must feel as a wizened professional in the field whose
> wise words of wisdom were never heeded(!). And hence, our politics, and

> governance, will only become ‘three dimensional’ when We, the People, *and
> our legislators*, utilize a ‘three-dimensional’ voting method that has the

> capability of finding the best needle in a haystack of options instead of
> one from either side of a line.
>
> And if Warren’s Score Voting, or even Brams’ Approval Voting, were
> instituted, just think what it would do to undermine gerrymandering: When
> there is an increase in viable political contenders (who don’t need to
> patronize any private political party in order to get votes) who are now on
>
> a level playing field (oh yes, build it and they will come!), it will be
> too complicated to poll specific voter preferences in order to fit them
> into a left-right box [now non-existent] which can be gerrymandered for
> political gain.

--I pretty much agree with that all.
You can see how distorted the "1D spectrum" picture is, by considering
the folloiwing:

1. US public is about 33%, 33%, 33% Repub, Dem, Independent by
self-professed affiliation, and over half Americans think the 2 top parties
are "inadequate" but they still vote for them about 99% of the time.
http://rangevoting.org/WantThirdParty.html

2. Take (say) abortion rights, less-taxes-for-rich policies like "flat
tax" and "abolish estate tax", health-care reform stances,
prayer-in-schools, and denying climate change.
What the hell do these have to do with each other? Very little. Why
are stances on these about 97% correlated in US politics? It is due
to the massive distortion due ultimately to the voting system. The
whole so-called 1D spectrum is largely the product of this distortion,
it has no logical basis by itself. If you want to vote for some of
these but against others, you presently cannot.

>
>>
>>
>
> --
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>
>

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 04:45 PM 5/14/2013, Warren D Smith wrote:
>It seems obvious that adding a 2-man runoff
>second stage to essentially any voting method, is going to make it
>less-extremist. (Since
>the less-extreme among the top 2 finishers will win.)

Bingo.

>IRV is sort of an approximation to doing that, so you might think it
>will be more pro-centrist than plain plurality... but if so this
>evidently is not
>enough to overcome plurality's pro-extremist bias...

Like Plurality, IRV *can* choose a centrist, but when there are two
extremist parties large enough to squeeze the center down to below
the "core support" for both of them, it fails and picks the less
extreme of the two.

IRV *is* a "simulation" of top-two Plurality runoff. Same result.

As Warren knows, Top-two Range is somewhat more efficient at reducing
Bayesian regret than plain Range, with "strategic voters." I.e., with
realistic voters.

Using an advanced voting system, such as Range, in a primary and
requiring a runoff whenever certain anomalies arise, such as a
Condorcet winner who does not generate maximized Range sum, or no
candidate gaining majority approval (requires an explicit approval
cutoff), would allow a runoff system to avoid this problem.

My sense is that with optimized design, few runoffs would be needed.
However, there is another possibility: hold the primary as exactly
that, with a *required* runoff held with the general election. It
would function like today's party primaries.

And this is the Arizona proposal, with a top two Approval primary.
For the first time, a voting system reform that isn't either
implementing top-two runoff (if no majority), vote-for-one, or a
single-ballot system, all of which have known flaws (or possible
flaws that aren't unreasonable). Range is merely the best single-ballot system.

Runoff voting is required to address the problem of inadequate voter
knowledge. That is precisely one of the Robert's Rules arguments for
repeated elections, in addition to noting the Center Squeeze problem
with the IRV method.

[George Sanders]

[For LNH lovers:] Bucklin vs. IRV: Both ranked ballots ‘provoke’ a majority, but which is better?:  In the 2^nd round, Bucklin adds the 2^nd preferences of ALL the voters to the first, but IRV only adds the 2^nd preferences of what it deems the worst candidate—the one who got the least 1^st-place votes!  So which of these two voting methods gets YOUR vote?  

[Michael Ossipoff]

On Tuesday, May 14, 2013 6:34:34 PM UTC-4, Dale Sheldon-Hess wrote:

On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 11:11 AM, Jameson Quinn <jameso...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Note that what Warren is calling an "observed fact" here is based on
> simulations. In the real world, voters may overcompensate for a system's
> tendencies, so an apparently extremist system (like plurality) can end up
> with boring winners (ie, the "Republocrat" thesis).

I realize I might be in a minority here, since I actually see quite a
bit of distance between the typical Republican candidate and the
typical Democratic candidate (and their respective parties).

 

Different people seem to see different things. You see what you see because your tv told you that's how it is..

 

Not on
all issues, of course, but on several substantive ones. And America's
voting age population seems to agree--call them dupes or call them
uninformed if you must, but that does seem to be their honestly held
opinion.

 

 

The honestly held opinion of media-zombies.

 

Or call them sheep, or cattle. Pick your own metaphor.

 

We all know that that's their opinion. But so what? ...;unless you're saying that it must be true because our tv-hypnotized population thinks so.

 

 

 

And it is also a commonly-held apparently-honest belief of
something over 50% of voters for a candidate more-liberal than the
typical Republican and more-conservative than the typical Democrat to
win

 

Likewise. See above.

 

 

With that in mind, I propose that the apparently-extremist system of
plurality is, in fact, extremist.

 

That isn't Plurality's problem. Plurality's problem is its beautifully effective and dependable ability to keep on electing the same two unliked parties forever at Myerson-Weber equilibrium. And of course that's what it's doing now. I call the Republocrats "unliked", because I'm referring to their policies, and especially to the obvious results of their policies. People complain about those obvious policy-results, though their tv has convinced them that they like one of "The Two Choices". In fact, of course, most people will (correctly) refer to Republocrats as "crooks", and "corrupt". But media have taught people that corruption is inevitable, because both of The Two Choices are corrupt. "That's just politics". So, as taught, people learn to like whichever corrupt Republocrat right wing they consider less bad than the other currupt Republocrat right wing.

 

Under current conditions, IRV would do the same, as would Beatpath ("Schulze")--but maybe not quite as reliably. Pluralitly is unmatched in that regard.

 

[quote]

IRV is, in the limit, somewhat less extremes-biased than plurality (a
two-party conspiracy could not push beyond 50% and still guarantee
victory over any single 3rd party candidate.) So IRV should tend to
push candidates slightly toward the center compared to the current
environment.

[/quote]

 

IRV will often automatically elect the CW, under sincere voting. That can't be said for Plurality. When IRV elects an extreme, it's only because the preferrers of the eliminated CW rank that extreme in next place.

 

Though IRV can elminate a CW, IRV always chooses from the mutual majority preferred-set.

 

We hear a lot of panic about IRV electing an (CW-preferrers-approved)  extreme (meaning someone other than the CW), when t eliminates a CW. But I ask, what's the big deal? There will obviousy be a majority who would have preferred the CW. If they dislike that outcome sufficiently, then that majority will have the power to change to a CC-complying voting system. In a polity that previously chose IRV, governed by a party that liked IRV, offered IRV in its platform, and enacted IRV, the most likely kind of CC-complying method will be one of the IRV Condorcet hybrids, such as Benham or Woodall.

 

So what? If they want to, then that majority will change the voting system to a CC-complying method. What's the problem?

 

 

[quote]

Approval (as well as Condorcet methods) are, of course, even better,

[/quote]

 

...at electing CWs. But Approval is hardly better at avoiding the chicken dilemma. Neither is Beatpath. Of course there are IRV Condorcet hybrids (two of which I named above) which have no chicken dilemma, and always choose the voted CW when there is one.

 

[quote]

since under the same theoretical framework they always elect the
candidate closest to the center

[/quote]

 

...by definition, if you call the voter-median "the center". That's good. As much as I prefer plain IRV for the Green scenario, I recognize that the IRV Condorcet hybrids would likely be more practical, and more stable, in the sense of being less vulnerable to replacemen.

 

 

[quote]

, so parties can't push beyond 0%
without giving up a guarantee of victory; only the most-moderate
candidate will ever be able to win.

[/quote]

 

...if you define "moderate" as "nearest to the voter-median".

 

You might be surprised about where the 'center" (voter-median) is. Could it be that maybe the center isn't between the Democrats and the Republians? :-)

 

[quote]

If someone truly believed that there was no difference between the two
current major parties (am I correct that that's part of the
"Republicrat thesis"?)

[/quote]

 

Yes. Look at their policies. Look at their actions instead of just their campaign words. The "party of the little man" looks a lot like the party of the rich man, after its candidates take office.

 

[quote]

 and that approval could help ameliorate that
problem

[/quote]

 

Approval, or any voting system, can't do anything about that. But what a better voting system, such as Approval, would do would be to at least reveal, under current conditions, the amount of support for non-Republocrat parties, platforms, policies and candidates. And I claim that that would result in Republocrats soon not winning any more elections.

 

[quote]

, then I think they must also believe either that politics is
significantly non-one-dimensional

[/quote]

 

U.S. politics is largely 1-dmensional, with most issues linked to eachother.

 

 

, or (equivalently?) that there are
one or major important issues that split voters but which are given no
time because "both sides" agree on it (or agree to ignore it
entirely.)

 

As for ignored issues, there are major issues that pretty much everyone complains about, but which are completely ignored in the corporate mass media (including NPR and PBS).

Whig party's) detriment.)

[quote]

I'm curious if others also think politics is mostly one-dimensional

[/quote]

 

U.S, politics is largely 1-dimensional, as described above.

 

 

[quote]

(and therefore there is "space" between the Ds and Rs)

[/quote]

 

There is no "space" between Democrats and Republicans.

 

The approximate 1-dimensional political spectrum doesn't imply space between the Dem and the Repub. That fiiction comes from your tv. And of course you believe it, because your tv wouldn't lie, right?

 

Michael Ossipoff

[Michael Ossipoff]

In a situation like USA now with only 2 contenders, there is an effect
causing convergence toward tweedledum/republocrats: both candidates
have advantage if move closer to voter-center.

 

 

Maybe you're assuming that "voter-center" is between the Democrat and the Republican? And I assume that, by "voter-center", you're referring to voter-median.

 

There's no particular reason to believe that the actual voter median, in terms of sincere preference, is between Dem and Repub. I claim that it's closer to the Greens. Yes, we've already discussed that (with some namecalling on your part). We needn't argue it again, and can just agree to disagtree on it. I'm just stating my opinion on that matter, different from your opinion. I'm not trying to re-start that debate. We've expressed our opinions, and that's sufficient.

 

My point is that Plurality doesn't reveal where the voter median is. Your friendly tv commentator doesn't either. The fact is that it can't presently be proved where the voter median is. So I sugest that we agree to disagree on where the voter median is, and, meanwhile, until we have better information (from a better voting system, or a more open media system), let's express opinions as opinions only.

 

 

However, there also is rampant gerrymandering in the USA.  

 

 

A completely unnecessary problem, since the simple and easy Band-Rectangle automated districting system would entirely eliminate gerrymandering. Your own automated disticting system, ("Shortest Bisector" or "Shortest-Splitline"?) would work too, but it's much more computation-intensive, and much less simple and easy.Band-Rectangle could easily and quickly be implemented without a computer.

 

Also, Band-Rectangle's districts would be pleasantly rectangular (except at jurisdiction boundaries, of course).  If the districting uses a cylindrical map projection then all of the horizontal straight lines would be east-west, and all of the vertical straight lines would be north-south.

 

If a Gnomonic projection were used, then those straight lines would be straight lines as measured on the (assumed spherical) Earth.

 

The use of the gerrymandering "problem" against single-member districts is fallacious, since the "problem" is so easily avoided.

 

Michael Ossipoff

 

 

[Bruce Gilson]

On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 6:34 PM, Dale Sheldon-Hess <da...@sheldon-hess.org> wrote:

On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 11:11 AM, Jameson Quinn <jameso...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Note that what Warren is calling an "observed fact" here is based on
> simulations. In the real world, voters may overcompensate for a system's
> tendencies, so an apparently extremist system (like plurality) can end up
> with boring winners (ie, the "Republocrat" thesis).

I realize I might be in a minority here, since I actually see quite a
bit of distance between the typical Republican candidate and the
typical Democratic candidate (and their respective parties). Not on
all issues, of course, but on several substantive ones. And America's
voting age population seems to agree--call them dupes or call them
uninformed if you must, but that does seem to be their honestly held
opinion. And it is also a commonly-held apparently-honest belief of
something over 50% of voters for a candidate more-liberal than the
typical Republican and more-conservative than the typical Democrat to
win (most of whom still vote for one or the other anyway.)

 

As you see from Ossipoff's response to you, he simply considers you deluded for seeing these differences. I think you're not, in fact, in the minority -- I suspect that most people on the list agree with you, not Ossipoff.

 

I certainly agree with your statement. I'm probably a lot more conservative than you are, though more liberal than what the "typical" Republican has become these days. Still, I'm conservative enough that I rarely vote for a Democrat. It would be nice, in my eyes, if every Republican were Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins. But I rarely find a Democratic candidate that isn't much further to my left than the Republican candidate is to my right.

[Michael Ossipoff]

On Tuesday, May 14, 2013 8:09:35 PM UTC-4, Dale Sheldon-Hess wrote:

 

 

If two candidates really are tweedledum/tweedledee, would they not
also both be very close to the center of their district?

 

No. Not if "center" means voter-median. They'd only be very close to eachother (as they in fact are).

 

...and very close to a "center" defined as the point halfway between them :-)

 

 

 

And wouldn't
that be _okay_? And wouldn't approval tend to pick the same winner?

 

Youi're joking, right? Approval would quickly home in on the voter-median,and then stay there. But there is no particular reason to believe that the voter-median is between the Dem and the Repub, unless you count the tv as a reason.

 

 

 [quote]
And if candidates/parties are converging

[/quote]

 

Candidates and parties are not converging. ...unless you're referring to the Dem and Repub "parties", which of course have already converged :-) but which may be steadily eliminating the minor and trivial diffeences that remain.

 

[quote]
What effect do we expect approval voting to have?

[/quote]

 

With an electorate who believe that only Dem and Repub are "viable" and "serious" parties, Approval reveal whatever amount of support non-Republocrat parties, platforms, policies and candidates have. Approval, unlike Plurality or other FBC-failing methods (inluding top-2 Runoff), will soon home in on the voter median and then stay there.

Michael Ossipoff
--
Dale

[Michael Ossipoff]

On Saturday, May 18, 2013 5:30:34 AM UTC-4, George Sanders wrote:

[For LNH lovers:] Bucklin vs. IRV:

 

 

IRV meets LNHa. Bucklin fails LNHa. IRV has no chicken dilemma. Bucklin has chicken dilemma.

 

 

Both ranked ballots ‘provoke’ a majority, but which is better?:

 

I'm not sure what it means to provoke a majority. Either could provoke a majority to anger, when it fails to elect a CW.

 

 

 

 In the 2^nd round, Bucklin adds the 2^nd preferences of ALL the voters to the first, but IRV only adds the 2^nd preferences of what it deems the worst candidate—the one who got the least 1^st-place votes!  So which of these two voting methods gets YOUR vote?  

 

 

You're using a method's (Bucklin"s) rule as a standard by which to support that method.

 

IRV meets the Mutual Majority Criterion (MMC). It's an incomparably briefly-defined MMC-complying method. Bucklin, too, can meet MMC, when the necessary delay is added to its count rule. But that delay provision complicates Bucklin's definition and description.

 

And, as I said above, IRV doesn't have chicken dilemma. Bucklin has chicken dilemma.

 

Instead of comparing IRV and Bucklin by a standard that is a re-statement of Bucklin's rule, how about you compare them by criteria and properties.

 

Here is such a comparison, mentioning a few important criteria by which IRV and ER-Bucklin differ::

 

IRV:

 

MMC, no chicken dilemma, LNHa,

 

Bucklin:

 

MMC (but as a significant definition-complication), FBC

 

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

 

So it would be a question of FBC vs freedom from chicken dilemma and simpler definition when meetng MMC.

 

For current conditions, FBC is essential, and so Bucklin wins.

 

For Green scenario conditions, where FBC isn't needed, IRV wins, with its freedom from chicken dilemma, and its simpler definition (Bucklin is complicated by its MMC modification).

 

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

 

But, if ER-Bucklin with the MMC modification looks good to you, for current conditions, I suggest that its MMC is rendered quite meaningless by its chicken dilemma.

 

I'd have to admit that, from a strategic standpoint, Bucklin could be said to be a little easier to use than Approval.

 

But, because, with rank balloting, the chicken dilemma can be avoided, even while meeting FBC, there is no reason to accept, consider, advoate or use a rank method that has chicken dilemma.

 

Michael Ossipoff

 

[Jameson Quinn]

Please note that I was not endorsing the "republocrat thesis", merely mentioning it. On that matter, I tend to agree with Dale around 80%, but I don't think this is the best forum for debating these issues. 

As to voting systems: I think that real world strategic plurality is less extremist than it would be theoretically with no strategy (or, as in Warren's BR calculations, with a Nash-equilibrium but non-ideological strategy which assigns the frontrunners arbitrarily). Does that make it extremist or centrist in an absolute sense? I don't think those terms are well-defined enough to answer that.

Jameson

2013/5/14 Dale Sheldon-Hess <da...@sheldon-hess.org>

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 04:30 AM 5/18/2013, George Sanders wrote:

>[For LNH lovers:] Bucklin vs. IRV: Both ranked
>ballots ‘provoke’ a majority, but which is
>better?: In the 2nd round, Bucklin adds the 2nd
>preferences of ALL the voters to the first, but
>IRV only adds the 2nd preferences of what it
>deems the worst candidate—the one who got the
>least 1st-place votes! So which of these two voting methods gets YOUR vote?

An interesting point. The goal of STV is fair
representation, and STV actually does its quality
work, in multiwinner elections, *before*
elimination, but the idea of elimination is that
*if* your preference is eliminated, then your
vote should be applied to another candidate if possible.

If we want a representative result, multiwinner,
I see George's suggestion as being that the 2nd
preference views of this voter are not likely to
be representative of the electorate as a whole,
whereas Bucklin literally looks at expressed
second preferences from the whole electorate.
Which are *obviously* more representative of the whole electorate!

LNH is a real-world test of preference strength
in a Bucklin election. The stronger your
preference for your favorite, the further down
the ranks you will push the second preference.
You only had two lower ranks in the original
Bucklin elections. There could be more. In
runoff-Bucklin, there could be even more, where
the essential voting issue for each voter in the
primary is "Would you prefer to vote for this
candidate now, and possibly complete the election
now, or would you prefer there to be a runoff?
And thus if the preference strength is high for
the favorite over the second preference, the
voter will defer making the choice till the
runoff, when they will have more information.

Basically, that Bucklin does "fail" LNH is part
of how it works to optimize voting. My suspicion
is that Warren's simulations did not simulate
this that they simply translated simulated
utility ranks to Bucklin ranks, ranking the top
three, which is *not* how Bucklin works. Many or
most voters will bullet vote *and there is
nothing wrong with that.* It's a sincere vote!
And voters did wait till the third rank to start
adding approvals. That they could do that, they
could leave the second rank blank, is what shows
that a Bucklin ballot *is* a Range ballot and the
method is a form of median range.

By imagining that Bucklin was simply a ranked
ballot, I'm suspecting, Warren missed the power
of Bucklin and has probably damaged the expected
outcomes. That is *not* a personal criticism.
Warren's work with simulations is fundamental to
this field. If I'm incorrect about how he
simulated Bucklin, I'd love correction. Bucklin,
however, should be *at least as good as Approval.*

[Dale Sheldon-Hess]

On Sat, May 18, 2013 at 2:48 AM, Michael Ossipoff
<email9...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> U.S, politics is largely 1-dimensional

>
> There is no "space" between Democrats and Republicans.

Let's at least pretend the "science" in the group's name means something.

I have not seen a coherent voter/election model where both of your
claims can be true and where approval voting would arrive at different
outcomes than plurality. Since you seem to believe this to be true in
the real world, would you care to describe a model that does so?

If not, and you would rather rant about grand conspiracies, there are
better places on the internet to spend your time.

--
Dale

[Dale Sheldon-Hess]

On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 10:16 AM, Dale Sheldon-Hess
<da...@sheldon-hess.org> wrote:
> If not, and you would rather rant about grand conspiracies, there are
> better places on the internet to spend your time.

...and then I see that Ossipoff's next message is him trying to
unsubscribe from the group.

So I guess we agreed on something ;)

--
Dale

[Michael Ossipoff]

> U.S, politics is largely 1-dimensional > > There is no "space" between Democrats and Republicans.

Dale says: [quote]

Let's at least pretend the "science" in the group's name means something. I have not seen a coherent voter/election model where both of your claims can be true and where approval voting would arrive at different outcomes than plurality. Since you seem to believe this to be true in the real world, would you care to describe a model that does so?

[/quote] If Dale thinks that a mostly 1-dimsensional political system, and the identicalness of some two political parties, is incompatible with Plurliity and Approval giving different results, then he needs to say why he thinks so. When making such a remarkable claim, the burden of proof is on Dale. But let me guess what Dale means: Dale is confusing actual "distance", or difference, with perceived difference. That's what it is, Dale, isn't it. l never denied that there is a media-induced, imagined difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. [quote]

If not, and you would rather rant about grand conspiracies, there are better places on the internet to spend your time.

[/quote] Nonsense. The consistent corporate media disinformation about the Dems and Repubs being "The Two Choices" is entirely relevant to U.S. politics, and to the choice of voting systems for the U.S. For example, that media fraud, and the resulting public perception, is the reason why FBC is necessary for a voting system to be adequate for current conditions. Maybe Dale to Dale, a "conspiracy" is any wrongdoing by someone trusted by Dale. A conspiracy is an instance of two or more people organizing, or agreeing to participate in, a crime. By that (standard) definition, there are hundreds, or maybe thousands, or conspiracies prosecuted in U.S. courts every day. To call something a "conspiracy", therefore, hardly amounts to an effective denial of it. However, I didn't say that the corporate mass media's disinformation is a conspiracy. It doesn't qualify as a conspiracy unless it involves a prosecutable, statutorily-defined crime. I didn't claim that it was a "conspiracy". So Dale is using a word that I didn't use, to discredit a claim that I didn't make. If this is Dale's way of trying to say that he wants to deny that there is media disinformation, then let's consider the validity of that denial: Our corporate mass media, including NPR and PBS, never mention the existence of, or say anything about, any political parties other than the Democrats and the Republicans. Those media never mention any policy proposals that differ significantly from those of the Democrats and the Republicans. ...and never mention any of a number of issues or complaints which actual people speak of as important to them. In the media, those widespread complaints just don't exist. Neither do the proposals to fix the complaints. Neither to the people or parties that tell how they'd fix the complaints. (Not being a tv-watcher, I can't speak for what PBS is saying lately, but my inclusion of PBS in the above comments is consistent with what I've noticed there during times when I did watch it). For example, NPR continually praises itself for explaining the world and its events to you, for "breaking the news, and then putting it back together for you", etc. The above-described corporate media omissions can only be described as a consistent media blackout. I'm not using the word "conspiracy", because I'm not claiming that a statute is being violated. Someone who knows more about law than I do could better answer Dale's question about that. There have been many instances of reporters telling of how they were warned not to cover something that their employers didn't want covered, or to not deviate from the official line on some issue. ...or of how they were fired for doing so. If you owned something (like the media) wouldn't you use it in your best interest? How implausible is that? Michael Ossipoff (I temporarily re-subscribed in order to finish two ongoing discussions. When the replies die-out, as they always soon do, I'll unsubscribe again for real.) -- Dale Click here to Reply or Forward Why this ad?Ads – Honda IndyCar Racing Visit the Honda Racing HPD site to learn more today. www.honda.com/indycar 512 0% full Using 0.1 GB of your 10.1 GB ©2013 Google - Terms & Privacy Last account activity: 5 minutes ago Details

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[Dale Sheldon-Hess]

On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 2:07 PM, Michael Ossipoff <email9...@gmail.com> wrote:

If Dale thinks that a mostly 1-dimsensional political system, and the
identicalness of some two political parties, is incompatible with
Plurliity and Approval giving different results, then he needs to say
why he thinks so.

It falls directly out of the 1D model.

Go play w/ Yee's voteline simulator until you understand it. http://zesty.ca/voting/voteline/

--

Dale

[Michael Ossipoff]

On Sat, 18 May 2013, Michael Ossipoff wrote:

>>Why is IRV being seriously considered here?

> Considered for what?

[quote]
****Considered for use in elections
[/quote]


Nonsense. There are elections of many kinds. There are many different
applications for voting systems, different voting situations. And
there are different conditions.

For example, I've defined "current conditions" and "Green scenario
conditions". For organizational voting, I've spoken of amicable and
inimical electorates.

And, of the frequent posters who've discussed IRV here, I'm the only
one who advocates IRV for any purpose. So, if Steve is referring to
anyone other than me, then he's mistaken if he thinks that they've
considered IRV for use in elecions of any kind.


> It would be difficult or impossible to answer Steve's question
> without more detailed specification of what consideration he's
> referring to.

[quote]
****My point is that the significant probability that an IRV election
will exhibit one of its weird behaviors should disqualify it for
consideration under all circumstances.
[/quote]

,,,,should, in Steve's mind.

I'm not saying that people's "shoulds" are wrong. But you're
completely wrong if you claim that your "should" is the right one,
without telling why you think so.

I've long been pointing out that, when people cite criteria, they
reallly need to say why they consider their criteria important or
necessary. In fact, I likely made that statement in the very posting
that Steve was replying to.



> On Saturday, May 18, 2013 12:12:01 PM UTC-4, Steve wrote:

> >I find it strange that there is so much discussion here in which
> >IRV (Instant Runoff Voting) is treated as tho it deserved
> >serious
> >consideration as a voting system.

> Steve is surely referring to the dedicatedly anti-IRV people who
were telling the reasons why they don't like IRV.

[quote]
****The above has to be some sort of typo. Obviously I am referring
to those, such as Michael, who argue that IRV should be seriously
considered as a reasonable choice under certain
circumstances. (Which Michael is doing in this posting.)
[/quote]

Steve is speaking of a plural number of people making such a claim.
Actually there's only one at this forum. But yes, I do make that claim.

But no, I don't merely argue that Approval should be seriously
considered as a reasonable choice under certain circumstances. I
assert that IRV is the best choice, or one of the best choices under
certain circumstances. (As in the Green scenario, if people aren't too
concerned about choosing the CW compromise, or letting non-MM voters
participate in choosing which MM-preferred candidate wins.),

Anyway, IRV isn't just being seriously considered as a reasonable
choice. IRV has been chosen, for the offered voting system, in the
platforms of at least four national political parties*. I agree with
and support that choice.

*Green Party U.S. (GPUS); Orignal, smaller, socialist Green Party
(G/GPUSA; Socialist Party USA (SPUSA); Reform Party

> But, to use "consider" a little differently, surely you understand
> that your criticism of something >won't count for much if it's clear
> to people that you dont, give it fair and serious cnsideration. If
> you don't, then you're just engaging in knee-jerk assertion and
> monologue.

[quote]
****I (and others in our group) have made numerous detailed arguments,
complete with examples, showing how IRV is capable of a number of
different kinds of pathological behavior, none of which are
exhibited by score or approval.
[/quote]

Different methods have different disadvantages. With the best rank
methods, it's possible to gain remarkable and powerful freedom from
strategy-need, for members of a muutual majority (and, with some of
those methods, good freedom from strategy need for all voters). Yes,
that means failing some monotonicity criteria, and similarly
strategically-irrelevant criteria.

[quote]
My contention is that any system
capable of such behavior should not be considered as an option for
any election, regardless of any other properties that it may have.
[/quote]

Steve's contention about his "should" isn't enough, of course. It's
necessary to tell _why_ he thinks that his criteria are important or
necessary.


> > There is much debate about the extent to which it favors
centrists or extremists

> That's an over-dramatic way of saying that it can fail to elect a
> CW, as can Approval.

[quote]
****Here Michael has failed to appreciate that cases where approval
does not elect a CW (Condorcet winner) are examples of an
advantage, not a drawback.
[/quote]

Not in elections where people care about strategy. Listen to Mr. Gilson.

Yes, if the election is u/a, then Approval strategy is simple: Approve
all of the acceptables, and none of the unacceptables. But that
doesn't let you choose among the acceptables. Any such choice must be
done, over subsequent elections, over the years, maybe taking an
addtional decade or more, before you find out what's the best you can
get, and finally achieve it.
.
Yes, Approval can be optimal in elections in which the alternatives
aren't different enough to make some of them odious to some voters.
Then there's less perception of strategy-need. Then people might be
satisfied to just approve what they like (I recommend that in
Approval). But, if conditions cause a perception of strategy-need, or
if you have strong preferences among your acceptable set, and don't
want to wait years and years to finally elect the best you can, then
you want IRV, AIRV, Woodall, Benham, Schwartz Woodall, MM-Woodall, or
MM-Benham instead of Approval or Score.

However, I assure Steve that, in the Green scenario, there would
surely soon be a national referndum or initiative to choose a national
voting system (There will be national initiatives and referenda, and
the Constitution could be amended to establish a national voting
system). In that initiative or referendum Steve would be welcome to
nominate Approval, and rank it in 1st place on the IRV ballot that
would be used in that Green America referendum or initiative. But,
Steve, don't forget that you'd have no reason to not rank as many
methods as you want to, because IRV meets LNHa.

You know, just in case Approval doesn't win.

[quote]
Approval will ALWAYS elect a candidate
that would have defeated all other candidates in 2-candidate
APPROVAL elections. Its results always make sense. (The same goes
for score voting.)
[/quote]

No, not really. The candidatre who'd beat each of the others in
2-candidate Approval elections would be the CW. ...if voters in those
2-way Approval elections vote in their obvious best interest. Likewise
for Score.

[quote]
****Consider the following examples, where IRV and score/approval
disagree as to the winner. In the first case score/approval
chooses the CW and IRV does not. In the second case, IRV chooses
the CW and score/approval does not. In both cases, it is obvious
that the score/approval choices are correct.

****
Example 1.
IRV votes
# votes
4 B>A>C
3 C>A>B
2 A>B>C
A is the CW. B wins the IRV election in 2 rounds.
Score votes below are consistent with the above IRV
election. (Scores range from 0-9)
[/quote]

6 voters rank A and B over C. That's a voted mutual majority. The
winner comes from that majority-preferred set. Furthermore, to
achieve that, the A voters and the B voters didn't have to do other
than rank sinicerely among {A,B}.

In your example, IRV has shown its sincerely-achieved majority-rule
power for a mutual majority.

Thanks for the example.

A is the CW, and A didn't win. The C voters weren't asked which
MM-preferred candidate to elect. They
weren't members of the mutual majority. Why should they decide which
MM-peferred candidate should win?

There's no ethical reason why it's necessary to include the non-MM C
voters in that choice.

Yes, there's a practical reason: The A voters and the C voters could
combine to make a dis-satisfied majority who would insist on replacing
IRV with Benham or (preferrably) Woodall. But that's fine. They can do
that via an initiative or referendum, in a Green U.S. government.



[quote]
# votes A B C
4 8 9 0
3 8 0 9
2 9 1 0 Scores: A, B, C: 74, 38, 27. A wins
Approval election, also consistent with the IRV election.
# votes
4 AB
3 AC
2 A Approvals: A=9, B=4, C=1. A wins


****
Example 2.
IRV votes
# votes
4 B>A>C
2 C>A>B
3 A>B>C
A is the CW. A wins the IRV election in 2 rounds.
Scores votes consistent with the IRV election votes
# votes A B C
4 1 9 0
3 1 0 9
2 9 8 0 Scores: A, B, C: 39, 60, 18. B wins
Approval election consistent with the IRV and score elections
above.
# votes
4 B
3 C
2 AB Approvals: A=2, B=6, C=3. B wins
In these examples, the score and approval results, contrary to the IRV
results, make sense.
[/quote]

What Steve believes "make sense" is a subjective matter of Steve's
opinion. Yes, Approval and Score better protect a CW, when people want
to protect hir.

That comes at a price. In Score and in Approval, the voters had a
strategic decision to make. In IRV, the A voters and the B voters
didn't have to concern themselves with strategy. And Woodall or Benham
would have automatically elected the CW, candidate A, while retaining
IRV's powerful combination of MMC and no chicken dilemma.

[quote]
****It is important to understand the distinction between the CC
(Condorcet criterion--choosing a candidate (the Condorcet winner
or CW) that is ranked over ever other candidate) and the
consistency criterion: choosing a candidate that would beat every
the candidate in a 2-candidate election of the type
considered.
[/quote]

The Consistency Criterion says that if X wins when only the district 1
votes are counted, and X wins when only the district 2 votes are
counted, then Xshould win when both the district 1 and district 2
votes are counted.

[end of Consistency Criterion definition]

That criterion is met by Approval and Score, but not by any Condorcet
method, and not be IRV. It, and the monotonicity criteria, and
Reversal Symmetry, could be
classified into a broad category of criteria called "consistency
criteria". When one of them is violated, Steve will say that something
"weird" has been done. ...but not something that causes a strategy
problem that could cause societal harm.


> Members of this group should be aware that every voting system fails
> criteria. In fact every voting system fails criteria that are
> obviously desirable.

> You give up one criterion in order to gain another one. Members of
> this group should understand that.

[quote]
****The various criteria appearing in our discussions are by no means
> of equal importance. Some are of minuscule value, and some, such as
> the CC are useless in that violating them in some cases, as shown
> above, is a positive behavior.
[/quote]

I agree that sometimes it's ok if CC is violated. That's why I like
IRV. That's why I like MM-Woodall and MM-Benham.

But,when CC is violated, there will be a majority who would have
preferred electing the CW. A dis-satisfied majority could insist on
enacting a CC-complying method. That's why I've suggested that Woodall
or Benham might eventually replace IRV. ....or Approval.

[quote]
>Score and approval are remarkably
> free of violations of significant criteria
[/quote]

...by steve's standards regarding which criteria are significant.

Approval and Score fail MMC and they both have the chicken dilemma.

I've told why the chicken dilemma wouldn't be a _problem_ in Approval
and Score (at least not if you don't mind a little extra work, taking
maybe an extra decade or two, before you get the best result you can). I call
the chicken dilemma a nuisance. But IRV, Woodall and Benham don't have
that nuisance. Unlike Approval or Score, IRV, Woodall and Benham will
immediately enforce majority rule for a MM, without that MM using any
strategy.

> and those they do fail
> have to do with strategic issues that are often debatable.

No doubt everything is debatable, as is evident from these forums. But
Steve seems to want to implly that strategy criteria are perhaps more
"debatable", and less "significant" than his various consistency
criteria (Mono-Raise, Participation, Mono-Add-Top, Consistency,
Reversal Symmetry). That's Steve's opinion. Ask him how those
criteria measure for something that would result in societal harm, to
the degree that strategy problems and failure of majority rule can
result in societal damage.

>> Have people forgotten about the following IRV characteristics?

>> 1. If all votes are reversed, the same candidate might still
win. More generally, reversing every vote will very often not
lead to the order of the results being reversed.


> No one has answered my question about why that's important. How does
> it cause strategy problem that could result in societal harm?

[quote]
****Strategy is not the point here.
[/quote]

No, not to Steve.

[quote]
Is it really necessary to present
reasons why it is an important failing for an election system to
sometimes rule that an election (where there are no ties) has
shown that the candidate MOST favored by the voters is also the

one LEAST favored by the voters? [/quote]

No, to a True Believer no reasons need be presented.

[quote]
Can you imagine the general
outrage if an election for the governor of a state displayed such
behavior?
[/quote]

Well perhaps people can imagine Steve trying to stir up such outrage.

In IRV, if a set of candidates is ranked over the others by a
majority, and you reverse the rankings, then that set will be ranked
_below_ the others by a majority.
Before the reversal, one of them would win. But not after the reversal.

I don't know if IRV violates Reversal Symmetry, but, if it does, it
will turn out to be an entirely unimportant case.

Notice that Steve doesn't have an example of IRV failing Reversal
Symmetry, and so we don't know whether or not he thinks that the
example is important, or can tell why it's important.

>> 2. Possible failure to elect a candidate that IRV elections
would show as beating every other candidate in a 2-candidate
election.


> Yes, IRV fails the Condorcet Criterion (CC). Approval fails CC
> too. So does Score.


****See above for the difference.

I've always acknowledged that Approval better protects a CW that
people want to protect. And in Approval they protect hir by strategy.
Approval and Score, compared to IRV, are to be noted for their need
for strategic judgments, which someone (maybe Steve) referred to as
"agonizing". In IRV, a MM needn't agonize in order to ensure victory
for their MM. They need only rank sincerely.

If you want to reliably elect CWs, in the Green scenario, then use
Woodall or Benhlam, not Approval or Score.

Under current conditions, ICT and (better yet) Symmetrical ICT meet (a
reasonable and justifiable version of) the Condorcet Criterion.
Approval and Score don't.

[quote]
**** I'm going to stop commenting at this point. It is obvious that
Michael is concerned only with "strategy" issues
[/quote]

Yes. I've amply told why.

[quote]
, which I regard
as of secondary importance as compared with matters of rational
interpretation of votes cast.
[/quote]

Steve is referring to consistency criteria, such as the monotonicity
criteria (Mono-Raise, Participation, Mono-Add-Top,
Mono-Add-Unique-Top, Consistency, and Reversal Symmetry.

Strategy problems are associated with consistent and reliably
predictable societal harm. Consistency
criteria failures are not.

[quote]
. Even the obviously important spoiler issue fades in
significance if the system is going to choose the winner with a
large degree of randomness.
[/quote]

The "obviously important spoiler issue", under current conditions,
guarantees perpetual rule by the same two unliked parties (actually
two right wings of one party).

Yes, any good rank method will do some capricious things (referred to
by Steve as "random"). That's the price for the powerful strategic
guarantees offered by the better rank methods, and the resulting
societal benefits, such as the much more immediate and rapid societal
improvement resulting from automatic majority rule enforcement, at
least for a MM (but for everyone, if the method meets CC, as do
Woodall and Benham).

Michael Ossipoff

[Michael Ossipoff]

On Thursday, May 23, 2013 6:45:58 PM UTC-4, Dale Sheldon-Hess wrote:

On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 2:07 PM, Michael Ossipoff <email9...@gmail.com> wrote:

If Dale thinks that a mostly 1-dimsensional political system, and the
identicalness of some two political parties, is incompatible with
Plurliity and Approval giving different results, then he needs to say
why he thinks so.

It falls directly out of the 1D model.

 

 

No, that won't do. 

 

Dale hasn't even tried to justifly his claim that, when there are two identical parties (but which might be mistakenly perceived as significantly different), Approval and Plurality will give the same results.

 

Say there are 3 parties. We'll call them D, R, and G.  Because this example is 1-dimensional, I'll specify the candidates' positions on a 1-dimensional scale:

 

G: 0

D: 1

R: 1

 

R and G are identical. However, due to campaign speeches (as opposed to actual conduct in office), and conditioned by consistent media disinformation, many voters perceive that R and D are different from eachother.

 

The G-preferring voters, additionally, have been conditioned to believe that their own numbers are fewer than they are. In fact, they've been conditioned to believe that the winner can never be anyone other than the candidate of the R party or the D party.

 

Here are the typical voter's mistaken perceptions of the candidates' positions, based on practically zero media coverage of G, and disinformational coverage of D and R:

 

G: 0.4

D: 0.5

R: 1.0

 

Voting results with Pluralty:

 

Given the mis-perception about the distances, and about the matter of winnability. The G voters correctly judge that, given their (mistaken) information, their optimal strategy is to vote for D.  D will often win. G candidates will never win, because their preferrers always vote for D.

 

Consequently, with G never winning, the media tell the voters that the election results are confirming the prediction that no one but D and R can ever win. So the G preferrers strategy of voting continues to be perceived by them as their optimal strategy, and G will never win.

 

Voting results with Approval:

 

The G voters, believing that the only way to prevent R from winning is to elect D, of course approve D. But they like G more, and they have no reason to not approve G as well, The G voters are a lot more nulmerous than they think they are. Consequently, the election results show G and D very close in their vote-totals. Evidentlyl (in this example, but maybe in the actual U.S. too), there are actually very few who really prefer the D policies to the G policies. That's obvious from the voting results.

 

So then, in the next election, the G voters know that they needn't approve D. They elect G.

 

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

 

In thiis example there is a 1-dimensional continuum on which the candidates are positioned.

 

In this example there are two identical candidates.

 

In this example, Plurality and Approval soon give different results.

 

Michael Ossipoff

 

 

 

 

[Michael Ossipoff]

On Thursday, May 23, 2013 6:45:58 PM UTC-4, Dale Sheldon-Hess wrote:

On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 2:07 PM, Michael Ossipoff <email9...@gmail.com> wrote:

If Dale thinks that a mostly 1-dimsensional political system, and the
identicalness of some two political parties, is incompatible with
Plurliity and Approval giving different results, then he needs to say
why he thinks so.

It falls directly out of the 1D model.

 

 

[Dale Sheldon-Hess]

On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 7:03 PM, Michael Ossipoff
<email9...@gmail.com> wrote:
> G: 0.4
> D: 0.5
> R: 1.0
>

> Voting results with Approval:
>
> They elect G.

Okay. So we assume a massive media effect convincing everyone to
consistently vote as if parties had entirely different political
spectrum positions. Fine.

But in this, your sample election with media-skewed positions, the
approval winner is D, not G. Which leads me to believe that you still
don't understand how the model works.

And if it helps clear things up, let me make a slight change to your
first ("actual positions") election:

R: 1.00
D: 0.99
G: 0.01

The plurality winner here is G; the approval winner is a D/G tie. And
one last one:

R: 0.83
X: 0.50
D: 0.17

The plurality winner is a tie between R and D, while the approval
winner is X. Understanding this example is vital to understanding what
I'm getting at.

Look, I don't deny that there are certain issues where the major
parties are indistinguishable, and where the position both have
settled on is one that a majority of voters would oppose. But there
ARE issues on which the major parties do differ, and on which voters
have differing opinions, and that this puts (some actually, not purely
media-created) ideological space between the parties, and that this
space (perhaps with media enhancement) is the major driver of American
politics. And that it sucks that other issues are ignored, but that
approval could make it possible to bring those neglected issues into
the political discussion, and that by doing so politics would become
less one-dimensional. But even then, there would STILL be real
ideological space between the two current major parties.

--
Dale

[Stephen Unger]

In essence, I agree with the argument here.

A secondary point is that I think that, in actuality, the Republicans
and Democrats are not identical. In addition to differences in
rhetoric, there are actual differences on some issues. But these are
on lesser issues, or the differences are minor.

On all major issues (e.g., wars, the environment, the economy), rhetoric
aside, the two parties are in close agreement. I don't consider these
differences sufficient to justify voting for either of them.

While (unfortunately) many people whose views resemble mine on many,
perhaps most, major issues have been voting D as the lesser evil (LE),
I have come to believe that we are worse off with the Ds in office,
because this leads many people who voted for Ds as the LE to accept
actions that they would loudly protest if carried out by Rs.

Steve
............

Stephen H. Unger
Professor Emeritus
Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
Columbia University
............

> �
> �
> �
> �

> �
> �
>
>

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 10:03 PM 5/23/2013, Michael Ossipoff wrote:

>On Thursday, May 23, 2013 6:45:58 PM UTC-4, Dale Sheldon-Hess wrote:
>
>On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 2:07 PM, Michael Ossipoff <email9...@gmail.com> wrote:
>If Dale thinks that a mostly 1-dimsensional political system, and the
>identicalness of some two political parties, is incompatible with
>Plurliity and Approval giving different results, then he needs to say
>why he thinks so.
>
>It falls directly out of the 1D model.
>
>No, that won't do.
>
>Dale hasn't even tried to justifly his claim that, when there are
>two identical parties (but which might be mistakenly perceived as
>significantly different), Approval and Plurality will give the same results.

I just read from someone who has been heavily involved with politics
that, in politics, perception is everything.

The concept that there are two *identical* parties is ridiculous,
beause they are each communities of *people* and no two people are
alike, and no two communities are identical. Even if people are
statistically the same, if people were divided into two groups, the
groups would not be "identical." Rather, they would *resemble* each
other to a greater or a lesser degree.

If there are two parties, only, Approval and Plurality will give the
same results, that's a tautology. I'm not sure why Michael even brings this up.

>Say there are 3 parties.

Where there are three, there are generally more than three. Michael
is drastically over-simplifying the situation.

> We'll call them D, R, and G.

They are therefore different in their names. And people attach to
names, it's human behavior. Is that the only difference?

> Because this example is 1-dimensional, I'll specify the
> candidates' positions on a 1-dimensional scale:
>
>G: 0
>D: 1
>R: 1

As Dale points out, this is extremely unlikely, it glosses over the
difference that does exist. But let's accept Michael's assumptions. R
and D parties are *identical.* Identical in what? Michael hasn't
actually said. He means *identical* in something called *actual
position,* which, again, isn't clearly defined. But we will assume
it. These parties, if their candidates are elected, will make
*identical decisions.*

Now, just so it's clear, we are already in La-La Land. This has
nothing to do with political realities on the ground, only in some
cloud floating in the air. The decisions will not be *identical*,
overall, even though some decisions will be identical.

>R and G are identical.

He meant D and G.

Elections, though, are about appearances, not realities.

> However, due to campaign speeches (as opposed to actual conduct in
> office), and conditioned by consistent media disinformation, many
> voters perceive that R and D are different from eachother.

Duh. Except, of course, for our intrepid G voters, who Know the
Truth, that R and D are identical, and, therefore, vote for Nader,
uh, "N." Since they are identical, it doesn't matter that you will be
wasting your vote, what matters is Taking a Stand for the Truth. It
doesn't matter what happens to the Supreme Court, it doesn't matter
what happens in Iraq, it doesn't matter what happens in New York in
2001, and, especially, it doesn't matter if it nearly kills the Green
Party in the U.S., since there is No Difference, the only vote that
could make a difference is a vote for G. It will keep G on the
ballot, which is all that matter to us.

Uh, isn't that *identical* to the position of D and R? "We should win
or position ourselves to win."

Ah, but the G voters are "right." The R and D voters are wrong. All
we have to do is convince them that they are wrong, and have always
been wrong, and will continue to be wrong if they vote for candidates
they like, and the world will change.

Great campaign strategy. To the Majority: You Are Wrong. How has that
been working for you, Michael?

How the Green Party Can Keep Itself Irrelevant, In One Easy Lesson.

So, let's see where Michale goes with this:

>The G-preferring voters, additionally, have been conditioned to
>believe that their own numbers are fewer than they are.

It's that pesky media again. Even the G-voters believe it. Green
Party leaders are helpless in the face of this massive disinformation
campaign, and what really hurts, they Don't Even Pay Attention to us!
It's all a plot.

>In fact, they've been conditioned to believe that the winner can
>never be anyone other than the candidate of the R party or the D party.

Perhaps they should read Green propaganda instead of media
propaganda. Or ... do ya think they might actually *test* this?

It was tested in 2000, in fact. At least N campaigned on a platform
that was, as far as I recall, "R and D are identical, so don't vote
for them, vote for me." So ... what is a G voter?

In fact, people are distributed across many dimensions, but,
especially, they are not at isolated positions. Micheal has not given
any percentage of peoople who are *actually at* the positions given;
but we can assume that all people fall into three positions, he has
called them 0 and 1. Actual positions. Now, where are the majority of people?

>Here are the typical voter's mistaken perceptions of the candidates'
>positions, based on practically zero media coverage of G, and
>disinformational coverage of D and R:
>
>G: 0.4
>D: 0.5
>R: 1.0

These are as seen by whom? All voters? Green voters? Surely the
perceptions will be different? Okay, he wrote "typical voter." In
fact, this is more like the typical partisan voter:

D: 1.0
R: 0.0
G: Huh? What's that?

(or D and R are reversed. And to a Green voter, sure, it's

R: 0.0
D: 0.1 -- say
G: 1.0

>Voting results with Pluralty:
>
>Given the mis-perception about the distances, and about the matter
>of winnability. The G voters correctly judge that, given their
>(mistaken) information, their optimal strategy is to vote for D. D
>will often win. G candidates will never win, because their
>preferrers always vote for D.

Only if they beieve they are not in a plurality. That is, in fact, at
this time, a realistic belief. Therefore sane political strategy
would be to work for fusion voting or at least a voting system that
allows additional preferences to be expressed. Or for proportional
representation systems, multiwinner, with enough seats being elected
in each district that a Green might have a chance.

>Consequently, with G never winning, the media tell the voters that
>the election results are confirming the prediction that no one but D
>and R can ever win. So the G preferrers strategy of voting continues
>to be perceived by them as their optimal strategy, and G will never win.

Unless they actually organize, create their own information networks,
determine when the time is ripe, and, when it is, vote only for their
own candidate.

>Voting results with Approval:
>
>The G voters, believing that the only way to prevent R from winning
>is to elect D, of course approve D. But they like G more, and they
>have no reason to not approve G as well, The G voters are a lot more
>nulmerous than they think they are.

That will show, probably. I do agree that Greens plus
Green-sympathizers are probably more numerous than appears. However,
Greens could also establish real numbers by different means than in
an election. Until they actually reach close to parity, and under
present conditiosn, running candidates in a major election is not the
way to build the party. Except with fusion, where they can support a
frontrunner, gaining identified party preference votes, leading to a
point in the future where, if the major party candidate is not
sufficiently friendly to their platform, they can then make a run.
Hopefully, by that time, there will be a better voting method in use,
and that's a project that the Greens could take on. Unfortunately, it
appears that they have taken on IRV, which could seriously backfire
for them. The Greens really should select some "delegates" to the
voting systems community, learn about voting systems, and then trust
what they come back with.

>Consequently, the election results show G and D very close in their
>vote-totals. Evidentlyl (in this example, but maybe in the actual
>U.S. too), there are actually very few who really prefer the D
>policies to the G policies. That's obvious from the voting results.
>
>So then, in the next election, the G voters know that they needn't
>approve D. They elect G.

There is a fundamental error here. Suppose the G and D votes are
indeed close (and D wins). What is not shown by that is actual
preference for G over D. That's why you need Range or Bucklin to
accomplish a plan like this. And, in fact, a G victory would come sooner.

There might be as many or more D voters adding an approval for G as
there are G voters adding an approval for D. What happened, by the
way, to the media campaign to convince people that D and R were
different? Did the media suddenly wake up, say, "My gosh, I have been
deceiving people for decades, my whole career has been a big lie, so
now I'm going to tell the truth: R and D are completely identical and
the only different party here is G."

Somehow I don't think so. So people will *still believe* that the
party's positions are as the *campaign* has pretended. So when the
Green Party leaders start telling people to vote G only, the D's are
far less than thrilled. They stop voting for G. If the Gs actually
did manage to come up to parity, R may win, because of the vote
splitting. And then the Green Party is demolished for practically a
generation, at least.

Remember, in the scenario, Greens believe the media the same as
everyone else. So they will believe that their leadership betrayed
them with really bad advice.

Approval does not handle this situation gracefully. Bucklin would.
Range could. Two-round systems, and especially with Approval in the
first round, and, say, a mandatory runoff as in Arizona. But to
handle more than three parties in partisan elections, gracefully,
would take Bucklin or RAnge in the primary.

> -----------------------

>
>In thiis example there is a 1-dimensional continuum on which the
>candidates are positioned.
>
>In this example there are two identical candidates.
>
>In this example, Plurality and Approval soon give different results.

There is a contradictory assumption. Michael is supposing something
that has *no effect on voters,* i.e., *real positions* as distinct
from *apparent positions.* Voters only know apparent positions. Isn't
that obvious? Voters are, also generally, *party-loyal," at least
many are, maybe most, maybe with occasional exceptions.

Michael has raised and mixed *two issues.* First, the "real
positions" of G, D, and R candidates, if elected. Opposed to this are
the "campaign positions," which differ. But with the G candidates,
there *are no real positions,* because "real positions" means actions
while in office. We only know what they *say* that they will do. Once
in office, you can depend on behavior being different, for nearly
everyone. The world looks different to people with power than to
people without it. Indeed, we could say that the current political
system *works* because politicians don't keep all their promises.
That would not suddenly change if a G was elected.

The second issue is the perception of relative vote strength, and
particularly of first preferences. If the system has been approval,
*we don't know first preferences,* except from bullet votes.* But the
scenario proposes that most Gs are approving D also. Which cannot,
with Approval, be distinguished from Ds also approving G.

No problem with Bucklin. Even if Bucklin collapses to Approval, the
first preference data is obvious. That, in fact, is why I have
suggested reporting all Bucklin data, even if not specifically needed
to provide information to political players about real voter positions.

Count All the Votes!

Range would do the same thing with a more complex ballot and somewhat
more complex voter decisions. Bucklin should be easier to vote than
Approval, in some ways. (IRV is easy to vote, it's part of its
appeal, but the cost is too great, both literally, in the canvassing,
but in poor results, on occasion, as well, and the situation of a
third party coming up to parity is exacty where it breaks down.)

So, to summarize: yes, Approval would provide much more information
to all voters for the next election, but not nearly as much as
Bucklin, while Bucklin performs very much like approval in actual amalgamation.

[Michael Ossipoff]

On Friday, May 24, 2013 3:11:12 PM UTC-4, Dale Sheldon-Hess wrote:

On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 7:03 PM, Michael Ossipoff
<email9...@gmail.com> wrote:
> G: 0.4
> D: 0.5
> R: 1.0
>
> Voting results with Approval:
>
> They elect G.

Okay. So we assume a massive media effect convincing everyone to
consistently vote as if parties had entirely different political
spectrum positions. Fine.

Few voters have any idea what the Greens offer. They likely don't realize the great difference between Greens and Democrats, or the extent to which the Greens' platform proposals answer their objections and complaints.

 

As for Dem and Repub, the Democrats, in media, and in their poliotical campaigns, are painted as progressives. And even if someone only perceived a small difference between Dem & Repub, that perception would be magnified, without any other differences with which to compare it (like the Dem vs Green difference).

 

And that overvalued Dem-Repub difference becomes all that matters, for the purpose of optimal voting strategy, if the voter believes that no one but Dem & Repub could possibly ever win.

  

But in this, your sample election with media-skewed positions, the
approval winner is D, not G. Which leads me to believe that you still
don't understand how the model works.

 

You're all confused, Dale.

 

In my example, D won the first election. But G's approval total was so high, nearly equal to that of D, that it revealed that the G-preferrers were a lot more numerous than theyd thought themselves to be.

 

So then, in the next election, knowing that they can win, the G-preferrers approve only G. G wins.

 

I said that in my previous post, but I'm repeating it for you.

 

In actuality, in the U.S. it could take more than one election. But we won't know that by guessing now.

 

 

 

And if it helps clear things up, let me make a slight change to your
first ("actual positions") election:

R: 1.00
D: 0.99
G: 0.01

 

Sure,that could be a good enugh representation of actuality.

 

The plurality winner here is G

 

 

Why would G win in Plurality if everyone believe that only R or D can win, and therefore votes for their more prefered among {D,R}?

 

; the approval winner is a D/G tie.

 

 

If the G voters, believing that they need D, approve D and G, and there are at least a few genuine D preferrers, then D will win the first Approval election. But that won't last, when the G preferrers find out, from the approval totals, how numerous they are.

 

You're not being entirely clear with us about what you mean in your examples.

 

 

And
one last one:

R: 0.83
X: 0.50
D: 0.17

The plurality winner is a tie between R and D, while the approval
winner is X. Understanding this example is vital to understanding what
I'm getting at.

 

So, assuming that R and D, and some X halfway between them, are the only candidates worth considering, you're saying that either the R side or the D side will perceive itself smaller than the other,and will therefore approve X, to prevent the other "extreme" from winning. 

 

That's plausible, if we ignore the ridiculousness of speaking of Dem and Repub as extremes :-)

 

Your example shows Approval electing an inbetween candidate, as it can do.

 

Look, I don't deny that there are certain issues where the major
parties are indistinguishable, and where the position both have
settled on is one that a majority of voters would oppose. But there
ARE issues on which the major parties do differ

 

 

 

...mostly in their campaign rhetoric. Someone in _Progressive_ magazine pointed out that the Dems are (relatively) progressive in their campaigns, and are Republicans when in office. He explained that by pointing out that they get their votes from one segment of the population, and get their money and instructions from a different segment of the population.

 

That's not counting the votes that they just get from Diebold :-) 

 

 

, and on which voters
have differing opinions, and that this puts (some actually, not purely
media-created) ideological space between the parties, and that this
space (perhaps with media enhancement) is the major driver of American
politics.

 

More than a little media enhancment.

 

Oh right, the Dems are more progressive about not requiring regimented, compulsory school prayer, and allowing gays in the military and gay marriage. And they like to talk about a better medical care system that never quite happens. And didn't Obama just insist that the war on Afghanistan must end? With an exclamation point, yet.

Our war-protesting president :-)

 

Have I basically covered the ideological differences that you were referring to? But maybe you know about some differences that I haven't heard of. When I was discussing this with Bruce Gilson, I invited him to tell how Dem and Repub differ. Specifically. No answer, of course.

 

But yes, that misbelilef is the main driver of American politics. You're right about that.

 

 

And that it sucks that other issues are ignored, but that
approval could make it possible to bring those neglected issues into
the political discussion

 

 

Quite so!  With Approval, the lesser-evil dynamic would cease, and the Greens could start getting full support from those who prefer their policy proposals to the policies of the Republocrats. Most definitely would that bring neglected issues into the discussion.

 

(But I personallly believe that electing the Greens in Pluralilty has a better chance than getting voting system reform under the Republocrats)

 

, and that by doing so politics would become
less one-dimensional.

 

It wouldn't have to.  Maybe it would, because the Libertarians would do better than now. But primarily politics would just become more expressive of our wishes because voting wouldn't be so dishonest.

 

But even then, there would STILL be real
ideological space between the two current major parties.

 

In the matter of small insignificant details. Calling it an ideological difference is an exaggeration. Basically, the two right wings of the Republocrats disagree on the best way to carry out the corporate agenda.

 

But even a small difference can result in strategic giveaway to lesser-evil Dem, when voters believe that no one but Dem or Repub could ever win.

 

 

Michael Ossipoff

 

[Dale Sheldon-Hess]

On Fri, May 24, 2013 at 4:11 PM, Michael Ossipoff

<email9...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > G: 0.4
>> > D: 0.5
>> > R: 1.0
>> >
>> > Voting results with Approval: They elect G.
>>

>> But in this, your sample election with media-skewed positions, the
>> approval winner is D, not G. Which leads me to believe that you still
>> don't understand how the model works.
>
> You're all confused, Dale.

So. You are not even interested in trying to understand the model.
That is good information for me to have.

>> R: 0.83
>> X: 0.50
>> D: 0.17
>>
>> The plurality winner is a tie between R and D, while the approval
>> winner is X. Understanding this example is vital to understanding what
>> I'm getting at.
>
> So, assuming that R and D, and some X halfway between them, are the only
> candidates worth considering, you're saying that either the R side or the D
> side will perceive itself smaller than the other,and will therefore approve
> X, to prevent the other "extreme" from winning.

No, that is not what I'm saying. Not in the least.

But I've said what I want to say in three different ways now and am
rather uninterested is trying to come up with a fourth way to explain
it just for you when I think everyone else already has it, and is
probably rather bored of hearing it.

--
Dale

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 02:11 PM 5/24/2013, Dale Sheldon-Hess wrote:
>On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 7:03 PM, Michael Ossipoff
><email9...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > G: 0.4
> > D: 0.5
> > R: 1.0
> >
> > Voting results with Approval:
> >
> > They elect G.
>
>Okay. So we assume a massive media effect convincing everyone to
>consistently vote as if parties had entirely different political
>spectrum positions. Fine.
>
>But in this, your sample election with media-skewed positions, the
>approval winner is D, not G. Which leads me to believe that you still
>don't understand how the model works.

Michael mixed up some assumptions, confusing everything with this
Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee argument, which is actually irrelevant.

He imagines that only the Green voters realize the True Situation. So
they bullet vote. Whereas the D's remain duped by the media, and
think that G is close the position of D, so they also approve G,
which makes some sense from Michael's "deluded position" scenario.
Michael really did not explain this well.

Or he may have some idea that the D's *really support G positions,*
and somehow wake up to that. All in one election.

[Writing what is below, I realized what these 1D issue space numbers
might mean. R being at 1.00 is *really strange* No voter is to the
outside of the R party position? In the scenario Mike proposed as the
perceived position -- which is how people will vote --, G dominates
the range of 0 - 0.45, D the range of 0.45 - 0.75, and R the range of
0.75- 1.0. So G does win, with 45% of the voters, under Plurality.
But with Approval, D could win. Michael is proposing a scenario that
it is believed that the Greens are the majority party.]

Behind Michael's thinking is total political naivete. Most candidates
for office are, in fact, dedicated to public service. What it takes
to get elected under the current system requires a lot of
compromises, but people still believe that's what they are there for.
And D and R candidates do take, personally, different positions. You
can see it in voting patterns. They do not vote identically, the
party differences are clear and easily documentable. Michael, I'm
sure, has in mind exceptions to this, where D and R positions can be
identical, as voted, even where rhetoric differs.

There can be exceptions where party discipline requires a certain
vote or the congressperson, say, is committing political suicide. But
some will do exactly that! Some are facing term limits and don't
intend to contnue a political career. At that point, we can see what
they are really made of, because they don't care if they are elected
again, and they don't need more campaign money.

Michael is another black-and-white thinker: things are *this way* or
they are *that way,* not in between or outside the restrictions of
that language.

There are solutions to the problem, and they actually take us outside
the whole existing political system, without attacking it, merely by
making it largely unnecessary. Or it will find a new role,
organizations have a survival instinct just like people.

>And if it helps clear things up, let me make a slight change to your
>first ("actual positions") election:
>
>R: 1.00
>D: 0.99
>G: 0.01
>
>The plurality winner here is G; the approval winner is a D/G tie.

I have not understood something about these numbers. They represent
party positions in a linear population space. So the above numbers
would indicate that R is at 1.00, an exteme. If there were 100
voters, only one would be R. 49 would be D, and 50 would be G. Hence
G wins. (G also gets the voter located at 0.00.) Because I'm coming
up with a (slightly) different answer than Dale, I may still not
understand something here.

> And
>one last one:
>
>R: 0.83
>X: 0.50
>D: 0.17
>
>The plurality winner is a tie between R and D, while the approval
>winner is X. Understanding this example is vital to understanding what
>I'm getting at.

We cannot know what the Approval winner is, because there is no
single sincere vote based on position. Plurality, espectially, is
based on strategy, and so is Approval, and stragegy depends on
perceived popularity.

So in the example above, R would dominate the range of 0.665 - 1.00,
X the range of 0.335 - 0.665, and D the range of 0 - 0.335.

The spans are R, 0.335; X, 0.330; D, 0.335.

So, yes, plurality winner is a tie between R and D. But the margin is
close, X is only slightly far behind.

Under Approval, some D voters are almost as close to X and may
approve X. Some R voters are almost as close to X and may approve X.
And some X voters will approve R and some D. This is based on
preference strength being below some value. Those voters are not
voters with high preference strength for the favorite. In particular,
R and D voters may fear that the opposite will win, so they may add
security votes for the middle candidate, and their relative proximity
to the middle allows them to do this with minimal loss, it approaches
zero as they approach the turning point. Thus it is indeed possible
that X will win.

(We could define a value Z that represents preference strength
between two candidates, and set a value of X below which the voter
will approve both. If Z equals 0.05, which is probably small, then
voters in the range of 0.615 to 0.715 will approve R and X, and
voters in the range of 0.285-0.385 will approve both X and D. So the
final results are

R 0.385, X, 0.430, D, 0.385. X wins.

In addition, the X voters have less motivation to add additional
approvals than do the R and D voters. So it's even more likely that X wins.

The value of Z that makes the election a three-way tie is 0.005. Very
small. (And that is not considering the strategic motivation for R
and D voters to add an X approval.

>Look, I don't deny that there are certain issues where the major
>parties are indistinguishable, and where the position both have
>settled on is one that a majority of voters would oppose. But there
>ARE issues on which the major parties do differ, and on which voters
>have differing opinions, and that this puts (some actually, not purely
>media-created) ideological space between the parties, and that this
>space (perhaps with media enhancement) is the major driver of American
>politics. And that it sucks that other issues are ignored, but that
>approval could make it possible to bring those neglected issues into
>the political discussion, and that by doing so politics would become
>less one-dimensional. But even then, there would STILL be real
>ideological space between the two current major parties.

I have no doubt that Approval would help minor parties get a toehold.
But further reform would be highly advisable before they could
actually win more than a few minor elections.

[Michael Ossipoff]

On Friday, May 24, 2013 8:32:01 PM UTC-4, Dale Sheldon-Hess wrote:

On Fri, May 24, 2013 at 4:11 PM, Michael Ossipoff
<email9...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > G: 0.4
>> > D: 0.5
>> > R: 1.0
>> >
>> > Voting results with Approval: They elect G.
>>
>> But in this, your sample election with media-skewed positions, the
>> approval winner is D, not G. Which leads me to believe that you still
>> don't understand how the model works.
>
> You're all confused, Dale.

So. You are not even interested in trying to understand the model.

 

Ulnderstand this: In my example, D indeed does win the 1st election, but then, via the better information available from Approval results, the G preferrrers soon notice that they no longer need D, and they approve only G, electing hir.

 

I have no idea what "model" you're referring to. But there's no need to explain it.

 

 

>> R: 0.83
>> X: 0.50
>> D: 0.17
>>
>> The plurality winner is a tie between R and D, while the approval
>> winner is X. Understanding this example is vital to understanding what
>> I'm getting at.
>
> So, assuming that R and D, and some X halfway between them, are the only
> candidates worth considering, you're saying that either the R side or the D
> side will perceive itself smaller than the other,and will therefore approve
> X, to prevent the other "extreme" from winning.

No, that is not what I'm saying. Not in the least.

But I've said what I want to say in three different ways now and am
rather uninterested is trying to come up with a fourth way to explain
it just for you when I think everyone else already has it

 

If everyone else knows what you're talking about, then I commend them, because I have no idea what you're talking about.

 

 

 

, and is
probably rather bored of hearing it.

Then consider the discussion concluded.

 

Michael Ossipoff

 

 

[Michael Ossipoff]

 

I've been participating in this forum directly at the electology website, rather than by e-mail, and therefore there's been no question of filtering anyone. I haven't been reading Mr. Lomax's postings because...who has that kind of time? I only answer statements that are concise, and are not careless or dishonest. But I'm going to make an exception today, because this posting from Mr. Lomax is entirely about a posting of mine.

 

I shouldn't bother replyiing to this, because it doesn't even come close to meeting my standards of conciseness, honesty, responsiblity and un-carelessness. Sloppily-posted statements don't deserve a reply, but I'm making an exception, just this once.  

 

I emphasize that, when I don't reply to Mr. Lomax's subsequent posts, even while I'm still subscribed here, that won't mean that Mr. Lomax has said something irrefutable. It's just that I won't make another exception, like the exception that I'm making when replying now.

On Friday, May 24, 2013 6:57:37 PM UTC-4, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:

I just read from someone who has been heavily involved with politics
that, in politics, perception is everything.

 

That's why my example is about perceptions.

 

The concept that there are two *identical* parties is ridiculous, beause they are each communities of *people* and no two people are
alike, and no two communities are identical. Even if people are
statistically the same, if people were divided into two groups, the
groups would not be "identical." Rather, they would *resemble* each
other to a greater or a lesser degree.

 

No one is saying that the Democrat and Repulican parties are identical right down to every participant or voter :-)

 

It's just that their policies don't significantly differ. The both belong to the same bribers and money-givers.

 

[quote]

If there are two parties, only, Approval and Plurality will give the
same results, that's a tautology. I'm not sure why Michael even brings this up.

[/quote]

 

Michael doesn't bring that up :-)  My example was about 3 parties.

 

With 3 or more parties, Approval and Plurality can give different results, when the approval totals reveal something that the Plurality voting results didn't reveal.

>Say there are 3 parties.

[quote]

Where there are three, there are generally more than three. Michael
is drastically over-simplifying the situation.

[/quote]

 

I was asked for an example. 3 candidates were sufficient to grant that request for a example. At no time did I imply that the U.S. only has 3 parties. Perhaps Mr. Lomax doesn;t understand the difference between an example and a detailed description of a coulnry's political system. But a 3-candidate example can adequately demonstrate a tendency, or answer a claim.

>  We'll call them D, R, and G.

[quote]

They are therefore different in their names. And people attach to
names, it's human behavior. Is that the only difference?

[/quot]

 

No. They also differ in their rhetoric, and in their roles in the media's "good-cop/bad-cop" game.

 

But they don't differ significantly in their policies.

 

>   Because this example is 1-dimensional, I'll specify the
> candidates' positions on a 1-dimensional scale:
>
>G: 0
>D: 1
>R: 1

[quote]

As Dale points out, this is extremely unlikely, it glosses over the
difference that does exist.

[/quote]

 

Nonsense. Dale's claim was specifically about two identical parties. That's why my example was about two identcal parties.

 

As for the actual situation with the Repubs and Dems, their "differences" are easy "gloss over", because they're insignificant. But, in reply to Dale's request for an answer regardng to identcal parties, my example was about two identical parties.

 

[quote]

But let's accept Michael's assumptions. R
and D parties are *identical.* Identical in what? Michael hasn't
actually said. He means *identical* in something called *actual
position,* which, again, isn't clearly defined. But we will assume
it. These parties, if their candidates are elected, will make
*identical decisions.*

[/quote]

 

If I didn't clarify it before, I'll clarify it now. The 1-dimensional continuum is policy-space. The two parties are identical in their policies.

 

And yes, as an idealization and simplifiation, in reply Dale's request for an answer regarding two identical parties, the R and parties behave identically in office--as the actual Repubs and Demos effectively do.

[quote]

Now, just so it's clear, we are already in La-La Land. This has
nothing to do with political realities on the ground

[/quote]

 

The example was in response to Dale's request regarding two identical parties. It was an example, not a detailed description of something "on the ground".

 

But the identicalness is actually a close description of Dems and Repubs, "on the ground".

 

[quote]

, only in some
cloud floating in the air. The decisions will not be *identical*,
overall, even though some decisions will be identical.

[/quote]

 

Dem and Repub policies are virtuallly identical. The Dem and Repub right wings of the Republocrat party differ only in details of how best to do the same things, based on the same premises.

>R and G are identical.

[quote]

He meant D and G.

[/quote]

 

I certainly din't mean that D and G are identical, in actuality or perception.

 

But no, I didn't mean that D and G are identical. I meant that D and R are identical.

 

G and D, however, in my example, are perceived as closer than they actually are, because no one has heard of G, or what they offer. That's the case in actuality too.

 

 

[quote]

Elections, though, are about appearances, not realities.

[/quote]

 

That's why my example was about appearances.

>  However, due to campaign speeches (as opposed to actual conduct in
> office), and conditioned by consistent media disinformation, many
> voters perceive that R and D are different from eachother.

[quote]

Duh. Except, of course, for our intrepid G voters

[/quote]

 

In the Plurality election there are no G voters, in my simplified example. There are G preferrers, but they all vote for D, for strategic reasons, based on false information.

 

In the Approval election, there are indeed G voters, but they needn't be intrepid to approve G. That's an advantage of Approval over Plurality.

 

 

 

[quote]

, who Know the
Truth, that R and D are identical

[/quote]

 

Mr. Lomax shouldn't post when he's drunk.

 

In my example, I specified that voters perceive a significant difference between R and D. I didn't say that the G preferrers know that R and D are identical.

You see, this is why this posting from Mr. Lomax doesn't deserve a reply. There won't be a reply to any subsequent postings from him.

 

Actually, of course, in acuality, most or all G preferrers do know that G and D differ dramatically, and that R and D don't.

 

Mr. Lomax may disagree with me regarding what the "truth" is, regarding the identicalness of Repub and Dem. But his captitalization of "Truth" implies that he's referring to official religious doctrine. The official doctrine, the official "Truth" is that the Dems and Repubs are significantly different, and are the "The Two Choices". I don't agree with that "Truth". Evidently Mr. Lomax does.

 

But you can capitalize "Truth" whenever it refers to a position with which you disagree, if you want to. It's another example of sloppy irresponsible posting, an example of why I shouldn't even bother replying to this posting. This reply is a last-time exception.

 

[quote]

, and, therefore, vote for Nader,
uh, "N."

[/quote]

 

Nader, or N, wasn't in my simplified example.

 

[quote]

Since they are identical, it doesn't matter that you will be
wasting your vote

[/quote]

 

Thank you, Mr. Lomax,for parroting the media for us. But you said it incorrectly. Since they're identical, you're _not_ wasting your vote. You'd be wasting your vote if you voted for one unliked party in order to help it defeat an identical unliked party.

 

[quote]

, what matters is Taking a Stand for the Truth. It
doesn't matter what happens to the Supreme Court

[/quote]

 

....little different with Dem and Repub presidents.

 

[quote]

, it doesn't matter
what happens in Iraq,

[/quote]

 

Now you know that either Mr. Lomax is drunk,or else astoundingly ignorant.

 

When Kerry and Bush had the love-fest referred to as a "debate", for the 2004 election, Kerry's only criticism of Bush was that Bush wasn't doing enough to subdue Iraq. The position that Kerry took was one of trying to be more Iraq-war-supportive than Bush.

 

[quote]

, and, especially, it doesn't matter if it nearly kills the Green
Party in the U.S., since there is No Difference, the only vote that
could make a difference is a vote for G.

[/quote]

 

Mr. Lomax catches on fast.

 

But he isn't entirely clear with us about what he thinks" nearly kills the Gren Party in the U.S."

 

[quote]

 It will keep G on the
ballot, which is all that matter to us.

[/quote]

 

The Greens' ballot status certainly contributes to their winnability. But that isn't the only reason to vote for them in our Plurality elections.

 

I claim that if everyone looked at platforms, and then voted in their own perceived best interest, the transition to a Green government would begin in 2014, and be complete in 2016.

 

...(if we had a legitimate vote-count. As I've said,  Project #1 must be to demand a verifiable, and therefore legitimate, vote-count, in  time for the 2014 election)

 

By the way, the sloppy run-on sentence above tends to confirm the suggestion that Mr. Lomax is drunk.

 

[quote]
Uh

[/quote]

 

Here, and below, Mr. Lomax says "Uh" too much. After a while, it loses its effect.

 

[quote]

, isn't that *identical* to the position of D and R? "We should win
or position ourselves to win."

[/quote]

 

I wasn't aware that the Greens had said that, expressed it as a "position".

 

No doubt every party would like to win. It's difficult to try t reply to a drunk.

[quote]

Ah, but the G voters are "right." The R and D voters are wrong. All
we have to do is convince them that they are wrong, and have always
been wrong, and will continue to be wrong if they vote for candidates
they like, and the world will change.

[/quote]

 

Voters are "wrong" when they vote for candidates whom they _don't_ really like. They're right when they vote for candidates whom they like.

 

Voters are wrong when they vote without first informing themselves. Reading platforms before votng is necessary, for informing oneself.

 

[quote]

Great campaign strategy. To the Majority: You Are Wrong. How has that
been working for you, Michael?

[/quote]

 

Try changing someone's vote by telling them that the way they're already voting is right :-)

 

But I'm not a public campaigner. I discuss the matter here, but I don't talk to the public. For one thing, I have no media access with which to do so. For another thing, it isn't my responsibility to change people or to change the world. Peope are like cattle or sheep. That's their nature, as a result of evolution. I can't change that, and it isn't my responsibility to try to change people.

[quote]

How the Green Party Can Keep Itself Irrelevant, In One Easy Lesson.

[/quote]

 

Mr. Lomax isn't being entirelly clear with us about what he means by "irrelevant".  Irrelevant because they probably won't win? Then, by Mr. Lomax's definition Dem & Repub are the relevant parties, and he certainly has his rights to his definitions, but he'd be clearer if he stated them.

 

>The G-preferring voters, additionally, have been conditioned to
>believe that their own numbers are fewer than they are.

[quote]

It's that pesky media again. Even the G-voters believe it.

[/quote]

 

For one thing, thare are no G-voters in the Pluralitly election, in my example. There are only G-preferrers.

 

In the Approval election, there are indeed G-voters.

 

And yes, my example stipulates that everyone believes the media's disinformation.

 

In the actual U.S., of course the Green preferrers,or most of them, know that the Greens are very significantly different from the Dems, and that the Dems and Repubs are virtually identical. But my example was a simplification. It certainly would have been a more accurate example if I'd said that the G-preferrers don't believe the positional disinformation. But the example made its point nevertheless.

 

[quote]

 Green
Party leaders are helpless in the face of this massive disinformation
campaign

[/quote]

 

They have zero mass-media access.

 

[quote]

, and what really hurts, they Don't Even Pay Attention to us!

[/quote]

 

Who is it that Mr. Lomax says Doesn't Even Pay Attention to [the Greens]. Who knows. Probably not Mr.Lomax either.He's too drunk.

 

The corporate mass media don't acknowledge the existence of the Greens, or anyone but Dem and Repub.   ...or acknowledge any policy proposals other than those of Dem and Repub. Perhaps that's what Mr.Lomax means by "Pay Attention".

 

[quote]

It's all a plot.

[/quote]

 

You'd need to supply a definition of what you mean by "a plot".

 

An intention to gain a desired  result by a dishonest or unethical act or a policy?

 

Are we playing rhetoric? Are we drunk?

 

>In fact, they've been conditioned to believe that the winner can
>never be anyone other than the candidate of the R party or the D party.

[quote]

Perhaps they should read Green propaganda instead of media
propaganda.

[quote]

 

I've often made it clear that it would be better if people, before voting (or before not voting) would read some political platforms to find out what the parties offer.

 

"Propaganda" is another of Mr. Lomax's un-defined rhetoric words. Litterally, it means something that is to be propagated. It would certainly be better to read what the various parties , candidates propagate, and then, to judge for oneself, than to read (but mostly watch on tv) only what the corporate mass-media propagate.

 

[quote]

Or ... do ya think they might actually *test* this?

[/quote]

 

Who might test what?  :-)

 

Might the voters test the belief that only Dem or Repub can win? That would be nice, but I wouldn't count on it.

[quote]

It was tested in 2000, in fact. At least N campaigned on a platform
that was, as far as I recall, "R and D are identical, so don't vote
for them, vote for me."

[/quote]

 

Mr. Lomax has gotten it right.

 

 

[quote]

So ... what is a G voter?

[/quote]

 

In my example,there were no G voters in Plurlaity. In the Approval election, all of the G-preferrers approved G. Feel free to call them "G-voters".

 

[quote]

In fact, people are distributed across many dimensions, but,
especially, they are not at isolated positions. Micheal has not given
any percentage of peoople who are *actually at* the positions given;
but we can assume that all people fall into three positions, he has
called them 0 and 1. Actual positions. Now, where are the majority of people?

[/quote]

 

In my example, a majority preferred G to D and R. That's how they were able to elect G, by approving only G.

 

>Here are the typical voter's mistaken perceptions of the candidates'
>positions, based on practically zero media coverage of G, and
>disinformational coverage of D and R:
>
>G: 0.4
>D: 0.5
>R: 1.0

[quote]

These are as seen by whom? All voters? Green voters? Surely the
perceptions will be different?

[/quote]

 

Quite. Actually the Green-preferrers don't share other voters' media-induced mis-perceptions. The example was inaccurate in that regard, but it was a simplification. As I said, it would have been better for it to to be more accurate in that regard, but it made its point, and answered Dale's question, nevertheless.

 

[quote]

D: 1.0
R: 0.0
G: Huh? What's that?

[/quote]

 

Most voters indeed haven't heard of the Greens, or don't know what they are, when they seem them on the ballot. In my example, I'm guessing that people regard G as only a little more progressive than D, because they know nothing of G.

 

>Voting results with Pluralty:
>
>Given the mis-perception about the distances, and about the matter
>of winnability. The G voters correctly judge that, given their
>(mistaken) information, their optimal strategy is to vote for D.  D
>will often win. G candidates will never win, because their
>preferrers always vote for D.

[quote]

Only if they beieve they are not in a plurality. That is, in fact, at
this time, a realistic belief.

[/quote]

 

Let's commend Mr. Lomax's powers of ESP :-)

 

At this time such things can't be known. But conversations, public and private, in media and everywhere else, indicate that most people want the thing that the GPUS platform offers, and that pretty much everyone complains about the things that the GPUS platform would fix.

 

Given legitimately counted elections, using a rank-balloting voting system that meets the Condorcet Criterion (CC) and the Mutual Majority Criterion (MMC) and doesn't have the chicken dilemma, and if voters read some platforms before voting, I suggest that the GPUS would win.

 

We don't have a ranked voting system. But I suggest that GPUS would win anyway, if people read platforms and voted in their own perceived best interest, using optimal Plurality strategy (Combine votes on the most winnagle acceptable candidate).

 

[quote]

Therefore sane political strategy
would be to work for fusion voting or at least a voting system that
allows additional preferences to be expressed. Or for proportional
representation systems, multiwinner, with enough seats being elected
in each district that a Green might have a chance.

[/quote]

 

Maybe "fusion voting" is some sort of Democrat-progressive electoral allliance? :-)

 

As for the reforms you speak of, I suggest that they can't happen without first electing (via Plurality) a party that offers them.

>Consequently, with G never winning, the media tell the voters that
>the election results are confirming the prediction that no one but D
>and R can ever win. So the G preferrers strategy of voting continues
>to be perceived by them as their optimal strategy, and G will never win.

[quote]

Unless they actually organize, create their own information network

[/quote]

 

Oh, is that all they need to do. Hopeflly Mr. Lomax will inform the Greens that they need to organize :-)

 

Create information networks that can reach all Americans. Is that all they need to do!  :-)

 

 

 

 

[quote]

s,
determine when the time is ripe, and, when it is, vote only for their
own candidate.

[/quote]

 

Mr. Lomax, presumably, will let us know when the time is ripe. Until then, presumably Mr. Lomax would have people continuing to vote Democrat.

>Voting results with Approval:
>
>The G voters, believing that the only way to prevent R from winning
>is to elect D, of course approve D. But they like G more, and they
>have no reason to not approve G as well, The G voters are a lot more
>nulmerous than they think they are.

 

 

 

[quote]

Hopefully, by that time, there will be a better voting method in use,
and that's a project that the Greens could take on. Unfortunately, it
appears that they have taken on IRV, which could seriously backfire
for them.

[/quote]

 

If the progressives are a mutual majority,then IRV won't "backfire" for the Greens.

 

If the progressives weren't a mutual majority then a progressive CW could lose to a Republocrat. But only if some progressives rank a Republocrat over the other pogressives, and only if the CW has low 1st choice support and gets immediately eliminated.

 

I expect that the progressives would vote as a mutual majority, and so that won't be a problem.

 

But it would always remin true that the elimination of a CW could result in a dis-satisfied majority, who would vote to replace IRV with a CC-complying method, preferably Woodall or Benham.That would be fine. I've written to the Greens to suggest that Woodall or Benham (but preferably Woodall) might be a better platfdorm proposal than IRV. But if the Greens want to start with IRV, and maybe later replace it with Woodall, that's fine too.

 

[quote][

The Greens really should select some "delegates" to the
voting systems community, learn about voting systems, and then trust
what they come back with.

[/quote]

 

The GPUS are quite satisfied with IRV. That's fine. If they later don't like the elimination of a Green CW, then they can join with the non-MM voters to form a majority that will replace IRF with Woodall.

>Consequently, the election results show G and D very close in their
>vote-totals. Evidentlyl (in this example, but maybe in the actual
>U.S. too), there are actually very few who really prefer the D
>policies to the G policies. That's obvious from the voting results.
>
>So then, in the next election, the G voters know that they needn't
>approve D. They elect G.

[quote]

There is a fundamental error here. Suppose the G and D votes are
indeed close (and D wins). What is not shown by that is actual
preference for G over D.

That's why you need Range or Bucklin to
accomplish a plan like this. And, in fact, a G victory would come sooner.

[/quote]

 

I was asked by Dale about a comparison of Plurality and Approval. That's what I discusssed. Proposal of rank methods isn't relevant to that discussion.

 

Bucklin needs a definintion a lot more complicated than that of IRV, if it is to pass MMC. But Bucklin's MMC compliance would be meaningless and worthless anyway, due to Bucklin's chicken dilemma.

[quote]

There might be as many or more D voters adding an approval for G as
there are G voters adding an approval for D.

[/quote]

 

D and R are perceived as the only winnable parties. D preferrers therefore have no incentive to approval G. The G+D ballots are ballots of strategically compromising G preferrers.

 

[quote]

What happened, by the
way, to the media campaign to convince people that D and R were
different? Did the media suddenly wake up, say, "My gosh, I have been
deceiving people for decades, my whole career has been a big lie, so
now I'm going to tell the truth: R and D are completely identical and
the only different party here is G."

[/quote]

 

No. In my example, the media never did other than propagating the disinformation that D and R are significantly different, and the only winnable parties.

 

But the G preferrers still prefer G to D. When they find that G is winnable, they no longer approve D.

[quote]

Somehow I don't think so. So people will *still believe* that the
party's positions are as the *campaign* has pretended.

[/quote]

 

My example didn't posit otherwise. But the G preferrers still like G more than D.

 

(In the actual U.S., of course, Green preferrers don't think that R and D are different, or that G is anything like similiar to D.)

 

 

[quote]

 So when the
Green Party leaders start telling people to vote G only, the D's are
far less than thrilled. They stop voting for G.

[/quote]

 

In my example, then never started voting for G, in Plurality or Approval.

 

 

[quote]

 If the Gs actually
did manage to come up to parity, R may win, because of the vote
splitting.

]/quote]

 

The G preferrers, believing media disinformation about winnability, don't stop approving D till the approval totals show that G is winnable.

 

Of course, in the actual U.S. the Green preferrers know that there is an immense difference between Green and Dem, and a negligible difference between Dem and Repub. That will make it easier for Green preferrers to risk a Repub victory, when they stop approving Dem. Anyone who reads the Green platform will know that, in comparison to the gulf between Green and Dem, there is no difference between Dem and Repub. Therfore, there will then be no incentive to vote for Dem, in Plurality or Approval.

 

I wouldn't even rank Dem in IRV, though IRV meets LNHa. The Dems aren't even good enough to deserve that.

 

[quote]

 And then the Green Party is demolished for practically a
generation, at least.

[/quote]

 

Who knows what Mr. Lomax means. I'm not claiming that the Greens will ever win. I only claim that it woudl be better if they did, and that they'd win if people read platforms and voted strategically in their best interest.

 

[quote]

Remember, in the scenario, Greens believe the media the same as
everyone else. So they will believe that their leadership betrayed
them with really bad advice.

[/quote]

 

In my example, the G preferrers vote D in Plurality. They begin by approving G+D in Approval, but then approve only G.

 

If R wins thereby, and the believe that R and D differ greatly, they'll indeed regret not approving D. That's where my example differs from reality. When voters find out what GPUS offer, they'll know that the R-D difference is negligible, and that it doesn't matter which of {D,R} wins.

[quote]

Approval does not handle this situation gracefully.

[/quote]

 

Approval requires strategy.

 

[quote]

 Bucklin would.

[/quote]

 

No. Bucklin only slightly improves on Approval's strategy situation, and fully retains the chicken dilemma.

 

[quote]
Range could.

[/quote]

 

Score could encourage people to vote more honesty, mitigating people's strategic errors.

 

[quote]

Two-round systems, and especially with Approval in the
first round, and, say, a mandatory runoff as in Arizona.

[/quote]

 

No. Lomax's 2-round systems fail both FBC and MMC.

 

Even if Lomax's Bucklin is the more complicated MMC-complying version, that MMC compliance is rendered meaningless by Bucklin's chicken dilemma.

 

>  -----------------------
>
>In thiis example there is a 1-dimensional continuum on which the
>candidates are positioned.
>
>In this example there are two identical candidates.
>
>In this example, Plurality and Approval soon give different results.

[quote]

There is a contradictory assumption. Michael is supposing something
that has *no effect on voters,* i.e., *real positions* as distinct
from *apparent positions.* Voters only know apparent positions. Isn't
that obvious?

[/quote]

 

Yes. What's Lomax's problem?

 

Dale asked about two identical parties. I provided them in my example. He didn't say that they had to be perceived as identical.

 

In what way does Mr. Lomax think that's contradictory. Yes, the media-disinformation contradicts the actual facts.

 

 

[quote]

Voters are, also generally, *party-loyal," at least
many are, maybe most, maybe with occasional exceptions.

[/quote]

 

Yes, lesser-evil Dem voters show remarkable loyalty to the Dems. I'm not saying that anything will change.

]quote]

Michael has raised and mixed *two issues.* First, the "real
positions" of G, D, and R candidates, if elected. Opposed to this are
the "campaign positions," which differ. But with the G candidates,
there *are no real positions,* because "real positions" means actions
while in office. We only know what they *say* that they will do.

[/quote]

 

...but that doesn't mean that we have to keep re-electing two unlike parties with a known bad track-record in office.

 

 

 

[quote]

 Once
in office, you can depend on behavior being different, for nearly
everyone. The world looks different to people with power than to
people without it. Indeed, we could say that the current political
system *works* because politicians don't keep all their promises.
That would not suddenly change if a G was elected.

[/quote]

 

Mr. Lomax thinks that GPUS would abandon and disregard their platform, breaking their platform promises, if elected. He's welcome to that belief.

 

[quote]

The second issue is the perception of relative vote strength, and
particularly of first preferences. If the system has been approval,
*we don't know first preferences,* except from bullet votes.* But the
scenario proposes that most Gs are approving D also. Which cannot,
with Approval, be distinguished from Ds also approving G.

[quote]

 

Wrong. If G is perceived as entirely unwinnable, then anyone genuinely preferring D would have no reason to strategically compromise by approving G. Therefore, the G+D ballots are those of G preferrers.

[quote]

No problem with Bucklin. Even if Bucklin collapses to Approval, the
first preference data is obvious.

[/quote]

 

Of course that's true of MCA as well. But voting an acceptable candidate below1st choice in Bucklin would be poor u/a strategy. In a u/a election,

[quote]

 (IRV is easy to vote, it's part of its
appeal, but the cost is too great, both literally, in the canvassing,
but in poor results, on occasion, as well, and the situation of a
third party coming up to parity is exacty where it breaks down.)

[/quote]

 

Mr. Lomax is trotting out the usual IRV criticism. IRV doesn't break down. IRV will always choose from the MM-preferred set if the MM rank sincerely.

 

IRV can fail to elect a CW, if you want to call that a breakdown. Maybe what Mr. Lomax means is that the non-MM voters have a favorite-burial need in IRV. That's ok, because, if my policy prefrences are any good, then I'll be in a MM. If you don't  have that confidence, then maybe you should reconsider your policy preferences. IRV gives the very best freedom from strategy need, to a MM, at the price of favorite-burial need for the non-MM voters.

 

If you want to extend better freedom from strategy need to all voters, if you want to honor all majorities,however constituted, by always electing the CW, then use Woodall or Benham instead of IRV, in the Green scenario

 

For current conditions, I don't propose IRV, due to its FBC failure.

 

Michael Ossipff.

 

[Michael Ossipoff]

 

Mr. Lomax says:

 

 

Michael mixed up some assumptions, confusing everything with this
Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee argument, which is actually irrelevant.

 

That has no clear meaning, so one can only look for Mr. Lomax's meaning in what follows:

 

 

[quote] 

He imagines that only the Green voters realize the True Situation.

[/quote]

 

Again, Mr. Lomax gives us his religious capitalization.

 

Each faction has a different perception. Each faction believes  its percetion to be true. But if there's a perception that Lomax disagrees with, he'll likely refer to it with capitals, to imply that someone believes it out of religious dogmatism.

 

In my example, the G preferrers don't realize the true situation (stipulated by me when I wrote the example)--namely the actual policy positions of the parties, or the winability of the G party. So Mr. Lomax isn't being entirely clear with us about what True Situation the G preferrers realize.

 

And I again remind Mr. Lomax that, in my example, in the Plurality vote, there are no G voters.

 

If we're referring to the actual U.S. then i agree pretty much with the true situation as described by the Greens, as opposed to the true situation as described by the Republocrats.

 

I suggest that the Green platform's version of the true situation is better supported by evidence than is the Republocrat version of the true situation. But this forum isn't  the place to argue that matter.

 

 

 

So
they bullet vote. Whereas the D's remain duped by the media, and
think that G is close the position of D, so they also approve G,

 

No, I never said that the D voters Approve G.

 

which makes some sense from Michael's "deluded position" scenario.
Michael really did not explain this well.

 

Did I not say that the D voters didn't approve G? Ok, I'm saying it now.

 .

[quote]

[Writing what is below, I realized what these 1D issue space numbers
might mean. R being at 1.00 is *really strange* No voter is to the
outside of the R party position?

[/quote]

 

Nothing was said about that. Maybe some voter are at 1.5

 

 

 

[quote]

In the scenario Mike proposed as the
perceived position -- which is how people will vote --, G dominates
the range of 0 - 0.45, D the range of 0.45 - 0.75, and R the range of
0.75- 1.0. So G does win, with 45% of the voters, under Plurality.

[/quote]

 

Nonsense. Mr. Lomax wants to assume that the voters are uniformly distributed along the entire political spectrum. That was never stipulated.

 

I meant only what I said, when telling my example.

 

 

[quote]

But with Approval, D could win. Michael is proposing a scenario that
it is believed that the Greens are the majority party.]

[/quote]

 

If we can decipher the meaning of that ungrammatical sentence, for D to win doesn't require G to have a majority. It only requires D+G to be a majority.

 

But if G wins when the  G voters approve only G, that's because G indeed has a majority.

[quote]

Behind Michael's thinking is total political naivete. Most candidates
for office are, in fact, dedicated to public service.

[/quote]

 

:-)

 

What's that about naivete?  :-)

 

 

 

[quote]

 What it takes
to get elected under the current system requires a lot of
compromises, but people still believe that's what they are there for.

[/quote]

 

:-)  That must be why they pretty much all take bribes and do as their bribers tell them.

 

By the way, did you ever seacrh, on the Internet for "Al Gore, East Liverpoll, Jim Hightower"?

 

 

[quote]

And D and R candidates do take, personally, different positions. You
can see it in voting patterns. They do not vote identically, the
party differences are clear and easily documentable. Michael, I'm
sure, has in mind exceptions to this, where D and R positions can be
identical, as voted, even where rhetoric differs.

[/quote]

 

No one denies that Repubs and Dems can differ on some relatively insignificant policy actions.

 

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

 

Now, this concludes my replies to Mr. Lomax. Today I made an exception by these two replies.

 

After this reply, my non-reply to Lomax doesn't mean that he's said something irrefutable.It must means that I'm not going to waste my time again, as I just have done today.

 

Michael Ossipoff

 

[Michael Ossipoff]

 

I'll just summarize like this:

 

If anyone thinks that there's a signficant difference between the Democrats and the Republican, then I recommend that that person actually read the GPUS platform, to find out what a difference looks like.

 

Michael Ossipoff

 

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 11:22 AM 5/25/2013, Michael Ossipoff wrote:
>
>I've been participating in this forum directly at the electology
>website, rather than by e-mail, and therefore there's been no
>question of filtering anyone. I haven't been reading Mr. Lomax's
>postings because...who has that kind of time? I only answer
>statements that are concise, and are not careless or dishonest. But
>I'm going to make an exception today, because this posting from Mr.
>Lomax is entirely about a posting of mine.
>
>I shouldn't bother replyiing to this, because it doesn't even come
>close to meeting my standards of conciseness, honesty, responsiblity
>and un-carelessness. Sloppily-posted statements don't deserve a
>reply, but I'm making an exception, just this once.
>
>I emphasize that, when I don't reply to Mr. Lomax's subsequent
>posts, even while I'm still subscribed here, that won't mean that
>Mr. Lomax has said something irrefutable. It's just that I won't
>make another exception, like the exception that I'm making when replying now.

zzzzz....zzzzz. What? Someone wake me up when he says something.

(I'm a moderator of this list and when Michael asked for help with
unsubcribing, I responded to him, but he apparently figured it out.
Then he asked me personal for help with subscribing again, and, since
Clay is on his honeymoon -- he usually gets to this stuff before me
-- I approved his subscription reapplication, and as part of all
this, I took him off my email filter so I could assist him if needed.
He's promised to unsbuscribe as soon as current threads are resolved
in his view. He is free to change his mind, his promise is not
binding. Even if it can be a little embarrassing to continue after
promising to leave.)

>On Friday, May 24, 2013 6:57:37 PM UTC-4, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
>I just read from someone who has been heavily involved with politics
>that, in politics, perception is everything.
>
>That's why my example is about perceptions.

But it was mixed with a fantasy about "reality." As if that has
anything to do with voting systems, which will *always* deal with
what voters perceive, not with "reality."

> The concept that there are two *identical* parties is ridiculous,
> beause they are each communities of *people* and no two people are
>alike, and no two communities are identical. Even if people are
>statistically the same, if people were divided into two groups, the
>groups would not be "identical." Rather, they would *resemble* each
>other to a greater or a lesser degree.
>
>No one is saying that the Democrat and Repulican parties are
>identical right down to every participant or voter :-)

The meaning of "identical" has not been adequately specified. What
was specified was *irrelevant* to how the voting systems and voting
process work. It's just another way of inciting argument, i.e., as
can be expected, people will then argue with the claim of
"identical," as if it were true or false. It is neither. It's a
statement that is true if considered one way and false if considered another.

>It's just that their policies don't significantly differ. The both
>belong to the same bribers and money-givers.

Their *apparent* polities differ. Who are "they"? Major parties in a
system like that of the U.S. depend on money. Greens, as an example,
have *plenty of money" and could support Green candidates if they
choose to. A smart Green strategy would not start with major offices,
because Green party support is not strong enough, but it would look
for minor victories in places where a win is possible. "Succeeding"
in being a spoiler in a major election is a tricky strategy, it can
easily backfire. Did Nader "succeed" in 2000? How did the Green party
do after this, by objective measures, such as donations?

>
>[quote]
>If there are two parties, only, Approval and Plurality will give the
>same results, that's a tautology. I'm not sure why Michael even
>brings this up.
>[/quote]
>
>Michael doesn't bring that up :-) My example was about 3 parties.

I made my statement in a context which Michael removed.... and I
don't think that "he said, she said" is important enough to go back and look.

>With 3 or more parties, Approval and Plurality can give different
>results, when the approval totals reveal something that the
>Plurality voting results didn't reveal.

Of course.

> >Say there are 3 parties.
>[quote]
>Where there are three, there are generally more than three. Michael
>is drastically over-simplifying the situation.
>[/quote]
>
>I was asked for an example.

Fair enough.

> 3 candidates were sufficient to grant that request for a example.
> At no time did I imply that the U.S. only has 3 parties. Perhaps
> Mr. Lomax doesn;t understand the difference between an example and
> a detailed description of a coulnry's political system. But a
> 3-candidate example can adequately demonstrate a tendency, or answer a claim.

It can or could.

> > We'll call them D, R, and G.
>[quote]
>They are therefore different in their names. And people attach to
>names, it's human behavior. Is that the only difference?
>[/quot]
>
>No. They also differ in their rhetoric, and in their roles in the
>media's "good-cop/bad-cop" game.

Bottom line, they differ in *public perception." And that's how
people vote. People mostly believe that what they perceive is real,
some are more sophisticated than that but *all of us act according to
what we perceive,* it is just that some are not so attached to the
*truth* of our "perceptions." "Perceptions," here, does not mean the
raw record of experience, which has a level of reality, but to
*judgments*, what we call "story."

>But they don't differ significantly in their policies.

This is the irrelevant assertion. It's a purely political statement,
an irrelevant assessment, asserted for obvious reason. This, stated
as fact, is not a perceived position in the scenario Michael
proposes, or, certainly it is not so at first. And if the Green
voters really assess R and D are identical, they would have no
motivation to approve D in the first place.

I described the situation as having several aspects: how Greens
perceive R and D, how they perceive themselves as to the strength of
support for "Green policies" among the general public, and thus how
they perceive their own chances for success in a public election.

Michael asserts that these views are distorted because of a
propaganda campaign. What would cause that effect to disappear? I can
guess at something, but Michael wasn't terribly explicit about it.

>
>
> > Because this example is 1-dimensional, I'll specify the
> > candidates' positions on a 1-dimensional scale:
> >
> >G: 0
> >D: 1
> >R: 1
>
>[quote]
>As Dale points out, this is extremely unlikely, it glosses over the
>difference that does exist.
>[/quote]
>
>Nonsense. Dale's claim was specifically about two identical parties.
>That's why my example was about two identcal parties.

The meaning of the "1-dimensional scale" was unclear. Perhaps there
is some standard for this that I've missed. I came to the
understanding that the numbers represented position on a scale that
arranged all voters in a linear spectrum, *ranked.* This doesn't make
sense, in fact, when I look at it more closely. I still don't know
what those numbers mean. What is the scale? Normally, we specify
numbers like this to, then, predict voter behavior, generally based
on distance in an "issue space," which is here one-dimensional. But
without some *distribution*, it would be meaningless. Therefore I
considered that the numbers might refer to a *voter position* in a
ranking of all voters, and candidates also occupy a position. With
that understanding, a position of "1" would only make sense as the
position of the most possible extreme candidate, there are no voters
outside of the range. If there are voters outside of the range, the
information is largely meaningless.

>As for the actual situation with the Repubs and Dems, their
>"differences" are easy "gloss over", because they're insignificant.
>But, in reply to Dale's request for an answer regardng to identcal
>parties, my example was about two identical parties.

If someone asks an unspecified question, how will the answer be
understood without fully specifying the question?

In answering the question, Michael was accepting the terms of it, it
seems. My response was to him, to his answer, that's all.

>[quote]
>But let's accept Michael's assumptions. R
>and D parties are *identical.* Identical in what? Michael hasn't
>actually said. He means *identical* in something called *actual
>position,* which, again, isn't clearly defined. But we will assume
>it. These parties, if their candidates are elected, will make
>*identical decisions.*
>[/quote]
>
>If I didn't clarify it before, I'll clarify it now. The
>1-dimensional continuum is policy-space. The two parties are
>identical in their policies.

*Which is totally irrelevant to how a voting system behaves.* In
Michael's transformative scenario, Greens start out by believing the
rhetoric, and not just the rhetoric about Green insigificant -- which
really isn't rhetoric, it's just how Greens are seen, and not just by
the media, the media mostly ignores the Greens, but Greens would
presumably know for themselves. How many people show up at Green
events? How many people actually vote Green when they have an
opportunity (and such opportunities certainly exist). In a race with,
say, R 60%, D 40%, and nominal G, if the method were approval, of
10%, the Greens could not elect the D, so they might as well vote for
the G. And certainly the Green party should focus on elections like this.

This is *entirely* a separate matter from "R and D are identical in
policies." Obviously, if Greens are voting for D because they think
they can't win, *they must think R and D are different.* If there
were no difference, as asserted by Nader in 2000, no voting for D.
Why should they? IRV would certainly not, then, have worked to elect
Gore. The Greens would not have added the additional ranked vote.

>And yes, as an idealization and simplifiation, in reply Dale's
>request for an answer regarding two identical parties, the R and
>parties behave identically in office--as the actual Repubs and Demos
>effectively do.

It might be more accurate to note that elected officials act alike in
many ways, regardless of what party they came from and how they
campaigned. But that is also a great oversimplification. And it's
*irrelevant* to the voting system issues.

What Michael is proposing is massive illusion, but he has a very
naive position as to how that illusion will be dispelled, and he puts
the cart before the horse. The only shift that he actually proposes
is that Approval will allow Greens to see what their true strength
is, but that is only true when the strength is small, and it can be
deceptive there, because it is not possible to tell, with Approval,
whether a Green is voting for a Green (a true first preference) or a
Democrat is voting for a Green as an additional vote (as a second preference).

Hence I suggested Bucklin, where first preference may be
distinguished, with very little strategic cost.

>[quote]
>Now, just so it's clear, we are already in La-La Land. This has
>nothing to do with political realities on the ground
>[/quote]
>
>The example was in response to Dale's request regarding two
>identical parties. It was an example, not a detailed description of
>something "on the ground".

Mike, do you think we care? This is all self-justification, a story
about why you wrote what you wrote, without an actual clarification
of what you intended, i.e., the substance. (That may *also* happen,
to be sure, but that what you wrote was a response to Dale is all on
the level of "not my fault.") It would have been enough -- or more
than enough -- to say it once.

>But the identicalness is actually a close description of Dems and
>Repubs, "on the ground".

Insisted upon even though utterly irrelevant to the election
scenarios presented.

>
>[quote]
>, only in some
>cloud floating in the air. The decisions will not be *identical*,
>overall, even though some decisions will be identical.
>[/quote]
>
>Dem and Repub policies are virtuallly identical. The Dem and Repub
>right wings of the Republocrat party differ only in details of how
>best to do the same things, based on the same premises.

Probably. In other words, *there is a high degree of consensus,*
concealed underneath differences on approaches. Difference in
approach is the *whole game.* That is, as to legitimate controversy.
There are other forces that have nothing to do with common social
goals. Somewhere in between is Me First. I.e, maybe we share common
goals, but I Am the Best, Vote for Me.

It's normal thinking in the World of Survival. It's not what we need
to move beyond the limitations of the present situation.

"Vote Green, Green is the Best" is just a variant on the same game.
Unless it isn't. I don't see Mike pointing to any evidence that
Greens are *actually different,* so from my perspective, in some
ways, it's not just Tweedledee and Tweedledum, it's also Tweedledo.

But from another perspective, the parties *are* different.

My opinion is that "they are the same" is a losing strategy for the
Greens. It's seen as fringe, and just a bit crazy.

And this is, again, irrelevant to how voting systems function.

Approval will help the Greens identify their true strength, but only
to a point. Not to the point where they would be likely to win,
unless they have a natural plurality. To win with that plurality,
they will need to establish themselves as the natural voice of the
majority, by behaving that way. As long as they see themselves as the
underdog, with an unfair media keeping them down, they are stuck. If
they are in the majority, *they can buy the media.* So ...
essentially, put up or shut up. Okay, don't shut up, but do take
responsibility for the process. Blaming others is a radically
disempowering position.

If the Greens are a significant minority, Approval will indeed show
it. But under Michaels' scenario, the only thing stopping the Greens
from winning is a misperception of their chances of winning. That can
be tested. Will the Greens test it? IRV would, in fact, test it,
except that IRV breaks down if a "third party" is close to parity
with the other two. Center Squeeze. Ooops! But voters don't normally
know that, so, at least at first, IRV would demonstrate true Green strength.

Based on the people I know, I'd be astonished if sincere Green
strength is above 10% as to first preference. That might be different
in some communities, such as Burlington, VT.

> >R and G are identical.
>[quote]
>He meant D and G.
>[/quote]
>
>I certainly din't mean that D and G are identical, in actuality or perception.

Arrggh. If I wrote that, it was an error. I meant to write R and D.
That's what he'd said.

>
>But no, I didn't mean that D and G are identical. I meant that D and
>R are identical.

Yes. We know that. I made a typo. As had Michael.

>G and D, however, in my example, are perceived as closer than they
>actually are, because no one has heard of G, or what they offer.
>That's the case in actuality too.

Haven't the G voters heard of G?

What stops G voters from talking to R and D voters?

Now, there *is* a difference between R and D, and it's obvious. They
are *perceived* differently. Michael proposes that they are identical
in *actual behavior in office.* They are not identical in *platform.*
Would Michael agree that the platform of the Ds is close to that of
the Gs than that of the Rs. And voters are affiliated with parties
for two basic reasons:

1. They more generally agree with the platform.
2. They have a history with the party, and they are loyal to it.

It looks to me like Michael is blaming the lack of communication
about Green positions on the "media," but media is motivated by two
forces: money and perceived popularity. Both. As long as the Greens
depend on the media to communicate, under these conditions, they will
continue to be disempowered. It's obvious. Rather, if they want to
transform the situation, Greens must take responsibility for
communicating their positions to those in R and D that would be
sympathetic to them, *building* their party. How about creating media
that will be perceived by others as *reliable*?

What's relevant here is that voters will vote based on what they
perceive, *however* they are influenced, not on "reality." I'll
assert *that* as "reality." As Reality, if you like.

>
>
>[quote]
>Elections, though, are about appearances, not realities.
>[/quote]
>
>That's why my example was about appearances.

Confusing it entirely with this thing about "identical," which is
certainly not about appearances.

Yes, the example was about appearances, but then it asserted a shift
without explaining how the shift would actually occur. I did read
what Michael wrote, and I can infer what he was thinking, correctly
or otherwise. He was thinking, I imagine, that the Green voters,
seeing from approval results that they are up there with the
Democrats, will then decide to stop approving the Democrat (which is
a dangerous strategy: if you are going to shoot the King, don't
miss.) If they truly are in the majority, yes, they could win with
this strategy, but I spent a fair amount of those posts that Michael
didn't read pointing out how bullet voting strategy under Approval
could badly backfire. Voters will *not* like it. I can confidently
predict it. Greens might lose some natural support over it. Democrats
who have been approving the Green will stop doing so.

No, as Greens approach parity, as would indeed be shown by Approval
results, they will start to win a few elections, under favorable
conditions. They had better, at that time, stump for a better voting
system, one that allows the expression of favorite without equating
it with Number 2. Buckling would do, Range of sufficient resolution
would do. IRV would do, but can badly break down under the very
conditions that are being tested. Yes, they might see that they are
at parity, but then what? (IRV *will* show true party support, that's
one thing it's good for, unless voters realize that they can demolish
their satisfaction with an election by voting sincerely.)

> > However, due to campaign speeches (as opposed to actual conduct in
> > office), and conditioned by consistent media disinformation, many
> > voters perceive that R and D are different from eachother.
>
>[quote]
>Duh. Except, of course, for our intrepid G voters
>[/quote]
>
>In the Plurality election there are no G voters, in my simplified
>example. There are G preferrers, but they all vote for D, for
>strategic reasons, based on false information.

A *G voter* could mean one of two things: a G preferrer (first
preference), or one who actually votes for G. With Plurality, yes,
there could be G preferrers who vote for D. Again, you assert "false
information." What false information? There is information and there
is interpretation. The *information* includes actual voting results
where Greens are running for office. Interpration would be personal,
for every voter. Yes, there are media commentators who present
interpretations, but voters *choose* whom to trust, and are
responsible for that choice. You have posited G preferrers who do not
know beans. They are deluded by the "media." What happens when a
Green canvasser knocks on their door and hands them a party leaflet
and says a few words about what Greens support? Do they slam the
door? If so, what makes you think they prefer the Green platform. By
the way, "platform" is just what a party says it supports. What makes
you think that an elected Green will be *any* different from elected
officials from the other parties? Because they say so? How many of
these people do you personally know, face to face?

What I suspect is that you simply assume that Greens will be
different from other politicians, because they are telling you what
you want to hear. That's the same as what you assert about the
Democrats, in particular. But what about all those Republicans? If
they find out that the Democrats *really* are just like the
Repubicans, would they stop voting Republican? Why?

The "identical" must be in some other realm. But that's irrelevant to
how voting systems work. Voting systems, except for Asset-based
systems, don't transform the public dialog much. We have some idea
that Approval may encourage cooperation, though little proof of that.
It just seems plausible, again, I wrote about this extensively in
respect to the Plantsville video.

But Asset could take the media out of the loop entirely. The same
with political parties, as such. Without ever attacking them. It
would use parties as long as people used them, but the *necessity*
would disappear.

>In the Approval election, there are indeed G voters, but they
>needn't be intrepid to approve G. That's an advantage of Approval
>over Plurality.

They will approve G. The problem is that there is no way to tell if
these are G voters who are voting for their favorite, or D voters,
adding an additional preference, perhaps because they perceive their
party should move to the left. "Intrepid" refers to being well enough
informed to know that not approving D will not lead to the election
of R. Or, alternatively, believing that R and D are identical, so it
doesn't matter. That was the Nader position in 2000. I used to like
Nader, until I saw, clearly, that he passed up an opportunity to
truly empower the Green party, to actually influence Democratic
policy, and to avoid the election of Bush, while building the power
of the Green Party for the next election. It's about money. He could
have raised a lot of money for the Green Party while at the same time
demonstrating true Green support, core support. He didn't. Sorry,
tell it to the people of Iraq that it didn't matter. Tell it to the
people who fell with the Twin Towers. Tell it to all the people
working on reform who may have to wait another generation for the
Supreme Court to shift.

Those are political views that don't depend on "media
disinformation." They are independent judgments, assessments.

Nader didn't have to do it the way he did. He played the Me First
politics game. From my point of view, he lost. And the Greens lost.

>[quote]
>, who Know the
>Truth, that R and D are identical
>[/quote]
>
>Mr. Lomax shouldn't post when he's drunk.

Funny. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Ossipoff should post
when he's sober. :-)

>In my example, I specified that voters perceive a significant
>difference between R and D. I didn't say that the G preferrers know
>that R and D are identical.
>You see, this is why this posting from Mr. Lomax doesn't deserve a
>reply. There won't be a reply to any subsequent postings from him.

I am *so* crushed. Michael is demonstrating what he has long
demoonstrated, how someone who is reasonably intelligent can make
himself effectively stupid. Michael did a lot of work on voting
systems for substantially more than a decade. Hardly anyone listens
to him any more. He shot himself in the foot by refusing to grow and learn.

>Actually, of course, in acuality, most or all G preferrers do know
>that G and D differ dramatically, and that R and D don't.

How many of these are there? Because those who don't know it will go
south if Greens promote, under Approval, a "don't vote for the
Democrat" strategy. And if enough of the Greens do bullet vote, the
Republican can win, and there will go more of the core support,
certainly the right-most quarter of the party support.

>Mr. Lomax may disagree with me regarding what the "truth" is,
>regarding the identicalness of Repub and Dem.

No. Michael radically fails to understand my position about "truth."
What Michael is calling "truth" here is just an interpretation, and
is neither true nor false. Rather, it is useful or not useful,
empowering or disempowering. Truth exists on another level, what I
would call Reality, which is not a story, not an interpretation. It just is.

> But his captitalization of "Truth" implies that he's referring to
> official religious doctrine.

I'm referring to people who believe that their interpretation is
True. I have no idea what he means by "official religious doctrine."
But if there is a "Green religion," yes, "True" would refer to dogma in it.

Some Greens will actually know Truth, and will know that it's not
about being Green, being Green may come out of it, but so can many
other positions and views. My committed assessment is that people who
do know what is worthy of being called Truth recognize this in each
other, regardless of personal experience, they literally see
eye-to-eye even if they disagree on this or that particular
interpretation, knowing that the differences are just about
interpretations, which vary, not about Truth.

> The official doctrine, the official "Truth" is that the Dems and
> Repubs are significantly different, and are the "The Two Choices".
> I don't agree with that "Truth". Evidently Mr. Lomax does.

Not the Official Truth according to Nader.

Ossipoff has just made up my position. My position is that
"identical" and "different" are both stories, interpretations, are
neither true nor false. The value of stories is in the states they
create in people. What's the actual effect of the story?

>But you can capitalize "Truth" whenever it refers to a position with
>which you disagree, if you want to.

Okay. Thanks for allowing me to do what I will do anyway. But I also
capitalize Truth when I tend to agree with a position, except that
I'm trained to rigorously distinguish stories from what actually
happened, i.e, what we actually know.

> It's another example of sloppy irresponsible posting, an example
> of why I shouldn't even bother replying to this posting. This reply
> is a last-time exception.

Promises, promises. Michael doesn't keep his. That's normal for
someone with his defacto ontology. I'm not claiming that he's
"better" one way or another, though frequent failure to keep one's
word is highly disempowering. In the other direct, from the Qur'an,
God will not hold you to your foolish promises. So Michael remains as
he has always been, free and responsible for his life. All of it. As
are we all, much as we might like to blame the media, stupid people,
"them," our employers, politicians, parents, and greedy capitalists
or fanatic socialist bureaucrats, Jews, Arabs, Muslims, Crusaders,
and on and on.

We are waking up. I'm seeing it day by day. I don't see everything.
Maybe the world is going to hell in a handbascket, and I'm just
seeing pockets defying entropy. But it's what I see, and it's what I declare.

>
>[quote]
>, and, therefore, vote for Nader,
>uh, "N."
>[/quote]
>
>Nader, or N, wasn't in my simplified example.

Right. I actually said something not in Michael's example. But G will
have a candidate in the election, why not "N." Everyone will know who
I'm talking about. As they would, now, about G or B. Most likely,
anyway, there is that Bad. fellow. Vote for Bad. Refreshing, I'd say.
In fact, I might have done it, just to say that I deliberately cast a
Bad vote for a good cause. (I do support much of the libertarian
cause, but it's become entirely too doctrinaire for my taste, which
is no personal comment on the Bad fellow. In an Approval election for
President, I might vote for D, G, and B, in that order if it was Bucklin.)

>[quote]
>Since they are identical, it doesn't matter that you will be
>wasting your vote
>[/quote]
>
>Thank you, Mr. Lomax,for parroting the media for us.

Sorry, there was a failure in my comment to use the best word. "It
doesn't matter *if* your vote is 'wasted.' If one believes the
"identical story," it really doesn't matter. So what is the media
comment being "parroted." Michael is so set on being right that he
doesn't notice agreement.

> But you said it incorrectly. Since they're identical, you're _not_
> wasting your vote. You'd be wasting your vote if you voted for one
> unliked party in order to help it defeat an identical unliked party.

So, I said it correctly *and* I'm parroting the media. Wow! That's *poetry*.

>[quote]
>, what matters is Taking a Stand for the Truth. It
>doesn't matter what happens to the Supreme Court
>[/quote]
>
>....little different with Dem and Repub presidents.

In the World According to Ossipoff.

> [quote]
>, it doesn't matter
>what happens in Iraq,
>[/quote]
>
>Now you know that either Mr. Lomax is drunk,or else astoundingly ignorant.

I know the situation rather intimately.

>When Kerry and Bush had the love-fest referred to as a "debate", for
>the 2004 election, Kerry's only criticism of Bush was that Bush
>wasn't doing enough to subdue Iraq. The position that Kerry took was
>one of trying to be more Iraq-war-supportive than Bush.

Political necessity, call it. Gore would not have gone into Iraq,
just as Clinton hadn't. Of course, if matters are not as they seem,
and the "military industrial complex" or Big Oil decided they need us
in Iraq, it might still have happened. What I decided a long time ago
was that we needed to elect people to office whom we can *actually
trust*, and that "political position" mattered much less. Someone
like Ossipoff infers trustworthiness from political position, which
is backwards and guaranteed to lead to disappointment. Politicians
will present political positions that will get them elected,
generally. At least the ones who get elected do, that ought to be
fairly obvious! Our system encourages this, and if we want something
better, we need to look at the *foundations of the system*, not at
details. Plurality would work fine if we *used* it intelligently and
cooperatively.

> [quote]
>, and, especially, it doesn't matter if it nearly kills the Green
>Party in the U.S., since there is No Difference, the only vote that
>could make a difference is a vote for G.
>[/quote]
>
>Mr. Lomax catches on fast.

I do understand the argument, Michael, even though you won't read this.

>But he isn't entirely clear with us about what he thinks" nearly
>kills the Gren Party in the U.S."

Michael did not make it clear what is not clear. What I think? What I
think is never clear, except when it is, i.e., moments of insanity.
"It all seemed so clear to me!" In therapy, and I've been in therapy
with some true experts, the therapist can get frustrated. One moment
I say "this," and the next I say "that."

However, I've said this many times. The loss of Gore in Florida,
which turned the election, was attributed, rightly or wrongly, on
Nader/Green stubborn refusal to compromise. Nader in 2000 got
2,882,000 votes. The Green candidate in 2004 got 119,859 votes. The
party was nearly demolished. Nader opted out of standing for the
Presidency as a Green, but ran an independent campaign, getting 463,655.

So where was the support for the Green Party? Nader ran again in 2008
as an independent, getting 738,475 votes. *People vote for people, by
and large, not for party platforms.* Nader has a certain kind of popularity.

From the Wikipedia article on the "Green Party of the United States":

>The Green Party in the United States has won elected office at the
><https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_government>local level; most
>winners of public office in the United States who are considered
>Greens have won
><https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-partisan_democracy#Elections>nonpartisan
>elections.<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Party_of_the_United_States#cite_note-74>[74]
>The highest-ranking Greens ever elected in the nation were:
><https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Eder>John Eder, a member of the
><https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maine_House_of_Representatives>Maine
>House of Representatives until his defeat in November 2006;
><https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audie_Bock>Audie Bock, elected to the
><https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Assembly>California
>State Assembly in 1999 but switched her registration to Independent
>seven months
>later<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Party_of_the_United_States#cite_note-75>[75]
>running as an independent in the 2000
>election;<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Party_of_the_United_States#cite_note-76>[76]
><https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Carroll_%28politician%29>Richard
>Carroll, elected to the
><https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkansas_House_of_Representatives>Arkansas
>House of Representatives in 2008 but switched parties to become a
>Democrat five months after his
>election;<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Party_of_the_United_States#cite_note-San_Francisco_Chronicle-77>[77]
>and <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fredrick_Smith>Fredrick Smith,
>elected to the
><https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkansas_House_of_Representatives>Arkansas
>House of Representatives in
>2012.<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Party_of_the_United_States#cite_note-78>[78]
>
>As of 2012, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fredrick_Smith>Fredrick
>Smith of the
><https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkansas_House_of_Representatives>Arkansas
>House of Representatives and Mayor
><https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gayle_McLaughlin>Gayle McLaughlin are
>the most notable Green elected officials in the United States.
>McLaughlin is serving her second term as mayor of
><https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richmond,_California>Richmond,
>California. McLaughlin defeated two Democrats in 2006 to become
>mayor,<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Party_of_the_United_States#cite_note-79>[79]
>and in was reelected in
>2010.<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Party_of_the_United_States#cite_note-80>[80]
>Richmond, with a population of over 100,000 people, is the largest
>city in the country with a Green mayor. In 2010
><https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Chipman>Ben Chipman, a former
>member of the Green Party, ran for
><https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maine_Legislature>Maine Legislature
>as an
><https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_%28politician%29>Independent
>and was elected. Chipman was reelected in
>2012.<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Party_of_the_United_States#cite_note-81>[81]

Winning nonpartisan elections is practically meaningless as to party
power. Remember that the winner of the first Bucklin election was a
Socialist, but it was a nonpartisan election. Party support might
have made a difference, organizationally. But in the ened, it looks
like at least some candidates elected as Greens dropped the banner.
Why? As incumbents, the argument that a Green can't win would not
apply. These former Greens clearly understood that being labelled as
a Green would be a liability, which requires that *they* understand
that support for the Green Party, per se, is a minority position.

I was going to mention that there are plenty of jurisdictions where
Democrats have a strong majority. Greens in those jurisdictions can
run directly against the Democrat, and support shown would then show
true support for the Green Party. Tucson, Arizona, comes to mind.
Republicans are far from winning in Tucson. A winning strategy that
would be safe, if necessary, would be to run as a Democrat in the
Democratic primary, while openly declaring one's sympathy with the
Green Party and, even, an intention to shift party affiliation to
Green. But that is not likely to happen, because Greens do not yet
have adequate support, I'd theorize. If I'm wrong, certainly a Green
could prove it, or could win with a campaign as a Green.

>[quote]
> It will keep G on the
>ballot, which is all that matter to us.
>[/quote]
>
>The Greens' ballot status certainly contributes to their
>winnability. But that isn't the only reason to vote for them in our
>Plurality elections.

It's the only practical effect at this point, other than a similar
effect, it displays strong preference. Weak preference would probably
vote for the Democrat. It's obvious that the Plurality results in
major elections do not show the full support for the Green Party, and
Warren's concept of an "incubator effect" is sound. Approval is the
simplest and safest "incubator method," most easily implemented, my
opinion, but it won't handle an aproach to parity well. Bucklin could.

>I claim that if everyone looked at platforms, and then voted in
>their own perceived best interest, the transition to a Green
>government would begin in 2014, and be complete in 2016.

And if wishes were horses, Napoleon would have remained Emperor. I
think Mike is dreaming. First of all, he imagines that platforms
matter. That's what political activists often think, and they put
enormous effort into polishing platforms. People mostly ignore them
and focus on the personalities. In the mass election systems we have,
this gives media impressions great power. That's not going to change
with a mere transition to Count All the Votes. That will address only
one minor aspect of the problem, the concealing of true Party support.

(Some voters *do* vote based on platform, or based on some general
idea that those who run in a party are the Good Guys, and others
aren't. So there is party loyalty, another factor. I personally at
this point vote a straight Democratic ticket, because at this
particular point I consider the balance of power to be dangerously
too far to the right. Just my choice. It's not an absolute principle,
and I did once vote for a Republican.

>...(if we had a legitimate vote-count. As I've said, Project #1
>must be to demand a verifiable, and therefore legitimate,
>vote-count, in time for the 2014 election)

It's important, I'll agree. But "demand" is not the way to get it. We
have this idea that treating governmental institutions as objects to
be controlled and coerced is going to change things. It won't. It's
actually part of the problem.

Rather, we will speak for the people in standing for accurate vote
counts and verifiable results. Don't we all want that? If someone
doesn't, we will let them say so. If someone wants to stick their
feet in their mouth (both feet, apparently), we'll let them.

>By the way, the sloppy run-on sentence above tends to confirm the
>suggestion that Mr. Lomax is drunk.

I represent the supsicion.

The "run-on sentence" was a deliberate parody of an incoherent
thinker. If I write about someone who is figurately drunk, does that
make me a drunk?

But I am intoxicated. All the time. Having a complete blast, I'm
happier than anyone has a right to be, as some might think. And my
11-year-old daughter knows exactly how that works, she can say it
easily. And that makes me even happier.

> [quote]
>Uh
>[/quote]
>
>Here, and below, Mr. Lomax says "Uh" too much. After a while, it
>loses its effect.

Gee, I liked it. Mr. Ossipoff didn't. Darn. "Uh" conveys such depth
of meaning, is so eloquent, represents a profound understanding of
the foundations of existence, and, hey, it's only two letters.
Imagine what I can say if I use three. Okay, you don't have to imagine.

Now.

My yahoomail signature reads, "I'm so excited I can't wait for Now."

>[quote]
>, isn't that *identical* to the position of D and R? "We should win
>or position ourselves to win."
>[/quote]
>
>I wasn't aware that the Greens had said that, expressed it as a "position".

Of course they haven't said that. It's a translation into English.

>No doubt every party would like to win. It's difficult to try t
>reply to a drunk.

No doubt. Mike doesn't realize that he just agreed with me. We will
have a party, some day, that wants the "people" to win, whether the
party candidates are elected or not. That will accept democratic
decisions and not believe that they are wrong. Demoex did this within
their own internal process, but still believed that everyone else was
wrong. They fell for the myth of "we are the greatest," where it is
human society that is the greatest, the whole thing. And *that* is a
winning position, notice what successful politicians tell the people.

It's not a *truth*, it's a *stand.*

>[quote]
>Ah, but the G voters are "right." The R and D voters are wrong. All
>we have to do is convince them that they are wrong, and have always
>been wrong, and will continue to be wrong if they vote for candidates
>they like, and the world will change.
>[/quote]
>
>Voters are "wrong" when they vote for candidates whom they _don't_
>really like.

Why are they wrong? They make choices. Who has the right to say they
are "wrong"? Some isolated, highly opinionated, obnoxious voting
system theorist? Who has accomplished what?

> They're right when they vote for candidates whom they like.

Even if the candidates will actually steal the farm?

"Right" and "wrong" are stories, made up. A vote is a real action,
one votes this way or that. Right and wrong are made-up meanings
attached to what happened. Stories. Stories are useful when they
empower. "Wrong" rarely empowers unless accompanied by a realization
that empowers. And when others tell us we are wrong, it is almost
always rejected. Want to reach someone, tell them where they are
right, and acknowledge it, and extend it, take it into new realms.

So what am I doing with Michael here? Am I telling him he's wrong?
Good question. I'm looking at it. Where have I done that?

But certainly I can understand that he'd *think* I was telling him
he's wrong. In fact, I'm a dialectical thinker. If you say A, I will
automatically assert not-A, it's an immediate occurring. I am not
saying that not-A is the "truth." I'm looking at opposites, seeking a
synthesis. Drives some people crazy, to be sure. People who think we
should always tell the "truth." I.e, whatever crazy nonsense we
believe at the moment.

>Voters are wrong when they vote without first informing themselves.

Why worry, be happy! Fact is, most of us, if we do this, will make
better decisions, instinctively. What I'm reading in Michael's
writing is a massive developed story about how people should be, that
is radically divorced from what is actually fulfilling.

> Reading platforms before votng is necessary, for informing oneself.

Informing oneself of what? Of what politicians claim to support? But
isn't that massively deceptive, at least for R and D? Or just for D?
or is it only an honest expression of intention for G?

Wouldn't it be more important to notice what politicians *actually
do*? How about dropping into the office of a congressperson or
senator and having a chat? I'm with a woman every week -- she is a
seminar leader -- who just did that with her senators and
congresspeople, about two or three weeks ago. She doesn't give a fig
about party platforms, she cares about actual votes in Congress on
legislation that makes a difference for people. Essentially, she
cares about people. And she conveys that, and stands for it.

>[quote]
>Great campaign strategy. To the Majority: You Are Wrong. How has that
>been working for you, Michael?
>[/quote]
>
>Try changing someone's vote by telling them that the way they're
>already voting is right :-)

Why would I want to change someone's vote? They will change their
vote if they are inspired to do so. How about asking them what they
really care about? If you don't know what they care about, you have
no clue as to how they "should" vote.

We held an Asset election. Did I ask anyone to vote for me? Did I
tell anyone how to vote? Did I object to anyone voting for someone
else, even though I know that, surely, I Am the Greatest. On Earth.
Strike that, in Massachusetts. Strike that, sitting at my desk. My
training is that I'm a servant of people who trust me. Not their
master, not their leader, per se, maybe occasionally their guide
through unfamiliar territory. Most often, I'm looking for people to
see for themselves, because what they have only because I say so is
next to useless.

>But I'm not a public campaigner.

Right. Why not?

> I discuss the matter here, but I don't talk to the public.

That's obvious.

> For one thing, I have no media access with which to do so.

The public begins out there on the street, in community activities,
in daily life. If you have something to say, media access may follow,
directly or indirectly. I.e., maybe someone you speak to will have
media access.

"i have no media access" is total disempowering BS. If you have
something to say to the people, you can create the access. If you
don't know how to to that, you can learn. I'm 69 and I just went
through massive training, and a piece of it was exactly that. How do
you communicate through the media? It starts by talking *with* people
in the media. But most of us stop ourselves, and we believe that we
"have no access." And because we believe that, we don't.

Michael is restricting himself to what ideas he has developed that he
thinks others need to know. He really doesn't understand others well
enough to judge that. I.e, he thinks he can't say through the media
what he believes is true, and he might be right about that. But if he
were to actually start communicating with people, including the
media, he would change, himself. He would not lose whatever he
actually knows, but his understanding would shift, open, broaden. He
would find a synthesis that *can* be communicated.

What stops him is nothing other than "Michael Ossipoff."

He might think I'm making this up about *him*. It's generic. What
stops me is Me. Always.

>For another thing, it isn't my responsibility to change people or to
>change the world. Peope are like cattle or sheep. That's their
>nature, as a result of evolution. I can't change that, and it isn't
>my responsibility to try to change people.

What *is* your responsibility, Michael? (Note that I agree it is not
his responsibility to try to change people. Change them or don't.
Don't "try." If you change people, it will because they were ready
and chose to change. Most people strongly resist being shoved into
changing. There is a reason why you can lead a horse to water and it
won't drink.)

>[quote]
>How the Green Party Can Keep Itself Irrelevant, In One Easy Lesson.
>[/quote]
>
>Mr. Lomax isn't being entirelly clear with us about what he means by
>"irrelevant". Irrelevant because they probably won't win?

Worse than that. Waste of time and effort. Now, I'm *not* saying that
the Green Party is such a waste, only that a certain approach is not
powerful and effective.

> Then, by Mr. Lomax's definition Dem & Repub are the relevant
> parties, and he certainly has his rights to his definitions, but
> he'd be clearer if he stated them.

See, Michael really doesn't understand what I'm saying, because he is
attempting to understand it in a realm that I don't live in any more,
the realm of right/wrong, true/false, good/bad, so he attempts to fix
my views into one position or another. A viewpoint is just that, a
view from a point, but I don't live at one point any more. It could
be said that I don't live anywhere, that I don't exist, but that's
one view, there are many others.

I'm told I talk too much. I do, that is, sometimes I talk when it is
more effective to say nothing.

> >The G-preferring voters, additionally, have been conditioned to
> >believe that their own numbers are fewer than they are.
>[quote]
>It's that pesky media again. Even the G-voters believe it.
>[/quote]
>
>For one thing, thare are no G-voters in the Pluralitly election, in
>my example. There are only G-preferrers.

That's what was meant by G-voters. This with a first preference for G.

>In the Approval election, there are indeed G-voters.

Of course.

>And yes, my example stipulates that everyone believes the media's
>disinformation.

Not everyone. You don't, do you? How do you vote? The Green Party
does get some votes. Are those merely naive? I.e, they vote for their
favorite because they don't realize the propaganda even exists?

>In the actual U.S., of course the Green preferrers,or most of them,
>know that the Greens are very significantly different from the Dems,
>and that the Dems and Repubs are virtually identical. But my example
>was a simplification. It certainly would have been a more accurate
>example if I'd said that the G-preferrers don't believe the
>positional disinformation. But the example made its point nevertheless.

Made its point to whom? Mike, your definition of communication is
based entirely on yourself. That's why your communication has become
less and less effective.

By the way, the Greens *are* different from the Dems, that's my
opinion, but I strongly suspect that most of those who do prefer the
Greens don't think there is no significant difference between the Rs
and Ds. Is there any evidence on this point?

*Something* happened in 2004, very likely connected with 2000. Why
did the Green vote collapse?

>[quote]
> Green
>Party leaders are helpless in the face of this massive disinformation
>campaign
>[/quote]
>
>They have zero mass-media access.

They don't have money? Why not? They don't know how to generate a
media event? This is the excuse of a *victim*, who does not take
responsibility for conditions. I know someone through my training who
decided, some years ago, to stand for gay marriage in Massachusetts.
So he developed a strategy, and executed it. The strategy worked. He
had no special access, he *created* it. He raised whatever funding
was needed -- and it was a lot. He certainly did not do this alone,
he learned and executed strategies for creating organizational
structure, created leaders besides himself.

The Green Party is not responsible for what Michael Ossipoff says. To
my knowledge, he has no role or position with the Greens. His words
are empty of real intention and power. That's my impression. I
decided to look a bit.

I found this page: http://www.democracychronicles.com/author/michael-ossipoff/

And I was interested in this:
http://www.democracychronicles.com/voting-in-organizations-clubs-meetings-and-families/

So, I wonder, what experience does Michael have with decision-making
process in "organizations, clubs, meetings, and families"?

From the article, I see no clue that he has *any* experience. The
article is a mind-boggling farrago of techncial voting systems
details that mostly have about zero relevance to basic meeting process.

Suppose you have joined your local PTA, i.e. say, you actually have
children and there is a need to make some decisions. Can you find
sound, usable advice on this page? It's all theory, not rooted in
practicality at all. Until and unless organizations become quite
large (which is not, generally, "clubs, meetings, and families")
complex voting systems are a fish bicyle. Where people can meet
directly, standard deliberative process, which is well known, can
come up with quite sophisticated results through repeated ballot.
Does Ossipoff have experience with small organizations that have what
he calls "inimical conditions," with successfully resolving the
conflict without demolishing the organization?

From many discussions, we know that Michael doesn't understand
social utility theory, which matches, properly understood, how people
instinctively think. He doesn't understand the imperatives of
functional organizational structure and tradition. He just knows how
various voting systems perform according to the abstractions called
"voting system criteria," some of which mean nothing to most people,
and which knee-jerk mean something deceptive for many.

>[quote]
>, and what really hurts, they Don't Even Pay Attention to us!
>[/quote]
>
>Who is it that Mr. Lomax says Doesn't Even Pay Attention to [the
>Greens]. Who knows. Probably not Mr.Lomax either.He's too drunk.

Definitely having too much fun.

This is what Michael has been saying: the media don't pay attention
to the Greens. Why should the media pay attention to the Greens? Is
their audience interested in the Green Party? Is someone going to pay
them to cover the Greens? Do they have an obligation to cover small
parties? Obligation to whom? That is, who is the interested party who
has a right to expect coverage?

I do see media coverage of the Greens. It's limited. It may not be
proportional to the percentage of the vote that Greens sometimes get.
That's a product of the concept of the Big Story. Greens are rarely
the Big Story.

Remember, politics is all about perception. To grow as a party, the
Greens will have to become skilled at creating perception,
impression. It's also called "branding." What is the Green "brand"?
Or does Michael think that Greens are above thinking about that?

In the modern world, they will *not* succeed unless they get smart.
If they do, money will follow. What is the disposable income of Green
Party supporters? Consider this, conceptually: if Green Party
supporters put serious effort into outreach, and fund it as needed,
with what need not be even a major part of their personal disposable
income, they can certainly grow, and as they grow, that available
funding will grow proportionally. They might have *already*, if they
were to organize effectively, more available funding than their
"enemies." They would have no trouble organizing media events and
obtaining media coverage.

Look at the Approval Voting video. That was professionally produced
for about $10,000. That's chicken feed. In 2000, over 2 million
voters voted for Nader. What if Nader had said to all his supporters,
"I am withdrawing from this election, because I want to support a
move in the right direction by my friend Al Gore, and I ask all those
who might have voted to me to go to [URL}, show that they would have
voted for me in what state, and donate $5 in my name, or more, to
building the Green Party for the future."

Someone who would not do this would either be *super poor* -- few
people are really that poor -- or they would not be true Green Party
supporters or even Nader supporters. And the Green Party would have
at least $10 million, probably a lot more (including a database of
*real supporters*) to create videos like our Approval Voting video,
on projects that would build the Green Party brand.

Most people would rather complain than actually take responsibility
for the planet.

Until they see something better.

>The corporate mass media don't acknowledge the existence of the
>Greens, or anyone but Dem and Repub. ...or acknowledge any policy
>proposals other than those of Dem and Repub. Perhaps that's what
>Mr.Lomax means by "Pay Attention".

Bingo.

>[quote]
>It's all a plot.
>[/quote]
>
>You'd need to supply a definition of what you mean by "a plot".

Aw, I'm tired of explaining the obvious.

>An intention to gain a desired result by a dishonest or unethical
>act or a policy?
>
>Are we playing rhetoric? Are we drunk?

I don't think you are. You simply are not having enough fun to be drunk.

A plot would, yes, be some unethical plan to suppress others. As I
recall, Michael expressed that there was a "media conspiracy" to
suppress true information about the Green Party. If so, that would be
unethical, I'd assert as a reasonable story, and thus a "plot." Plot
could be used without the implication of unethicality, but that's not
how I was using it. In the mind of the Green apologist I was
parodying, it's definitely a conspiracy, a plot.

> >In fact, they've been conditioned to believe that the winner can
> >never be anyone other than the candidate of the R party or the D party.
>
>[quote]
>Perhaps they should read Green propaganda instead of media
>propaganda.
>[quote]
>
>I've often made it clear that it would be better if people, before
>voting (or before not voting) would read some political platforms to
>find out what the parties offer.

Promises, promises. What else do they offer?

>"Propaganda" is another of Mr. Lomax's un-defined rhetoric words.

Michael used "propaganda," and I meant it quite the same way as he
meant it. I merely pointed out that there is also Green propaganda.
Propaganda is polemic, language designed to convince someone of
something. It is not necessarily false, but often propagandists don't
really care about fact, they care about *effect*.

So "propaganda" was a "rhetorical word" when I used it and not when
Michael used it? Fascinating.

> Litterally, it means something that is to be propagated. It would
> certainly be better to read what the various parties , candidates
> propagate, and then, to judge for oneself, than to read (but mostly
> watch on tv) only what the corporate mass-media propagate.

Why bother with any of it? I don't watch TV, other than youtube, and
by accident sometimes. When I do, I'm fascinated by how they sell
stuff. A very high degree of skill has been developed, production
values have generally become high.

>[quote]
>Or ... do ya think they might actually *test* this?
>[/quote]
>
>Who might test what? :-)

The propaganda. I.e., what *is* the real support for the Green party?
Ordinary advertisers used focus groups and polls. The major parties
do the same. Could the Greens do this?

>Might the voters test the belief that only Dem or Repub can win?
>That would be nice, but I wouldn't count on it.

It would be easy to test, if the Green Party put its mind to it.
First of all, I don't believe that "only the Dem or Repub" can win.
It's obviously false. Greens have won elections, though most have
been nonpartisan elections, which doesn't really test the matter.
There are places where that wisdom could be safely challenged, so
would the Green Party support some local campaigns? Trying it in a
big election is, first of all, expensive, and, second of all, is more
likely, unless the state is solidly one way or another, (i.e., as to
D or R) to cause a spoiler effect.

These would need to be *partisan* elections to test Green Party
popularity. The Party researchers and activsts, for efficiency and
best use of funding, would need to do extensive polling to determine
the feasibility of winning. This is all stuff that professional
political advisors know how to do.

It will all get easier with an advanced voting system, of which the
simplest that would start to show true Green popularity would be
Approval and then Bucklin (Bucklin could take the party all the way
from starting to show true strength up to and beyond parity, if
that's possible.)

>[quote]
>It was tested in 2000, in fact. At least N campaigned on a platform
>that was, as far as I recall, "R and D are identical, so don't vote
>for them, vote for me."
>[/quote]
>
>Mr. Lomax has gotten it right.

Just lucky, I guess. Stopped clock is right twice a day.

>[quote]
>So ... what is a G voter?
>[/quote]
>
>In my example,there were no G voters in Plurlaity. In the Approval
>election, all of the G-preferrers approved G. Feel free to call them
>"G-voters".

I was using G-voter as meaning a voter who prefers G, but I do
recognize that this could be confusing. I meant who prefers G, and
how do we know it? We can't tell with Approval, except for the bullet
voters who vote for G. They clearly prefer G.

With Plurality, we would need to rely on exit polling or the like.
Does the Green Party run exit polls? If not, why not? Mostly, it
doesn't take money, it takes volunteers. Do they have any?

>[quote]
>In fact, people are distributed across many dimensions, but,
>especially, they are not at isolated positions. Micheal has not given
>any percentage of peoople who are *actually at* the positions given;
>but we can assume that all people fall into three positions, he has
>called them 0 and 1. Actual positions. Now, where are the majority of people?
>[/quote]
>
>In my example, a majority preferred G to D and R. That's how they
>were able to elect G, by approving only G.

But this was not shown with any numbers. *What did these numbers mean?*

0 G
1 D
1 R

If those were positions in a linear issue space -- i.e, this is
equivalent to saying that people are evenly distributed across that
space, and, then, their votes depend on distance from the G or (D,R)
positions -- then this would express an even division, such that
sincere plurality votes would elect G (because D and R votes would be split)

Notice: Michael's scenario defines a possible D and R loss as being
the result of vote splitting!

Michael created this numerical statement out of an assertion that D
and R were *really* the same. But people do not vote based on
"reality," rather they vote based on "perception."

There are two positions Michael is asserting, and he confuses them.
One is a belief that D and R are different, asserted to be an
illusion, and the other is a belief that G cannot win, also asserted
as an illusion. Michael has linked them through an assertion of
common cause, which was "media disinformation."

But they have differing and distinct effects. What would keep
G-preferrers from finding out the truth about the possibility of a G
winning? Are they helpless? Do they collectively need the media to
investigate? Why would they trust the media? The media gets it wrong
all the time, that is, they are frequently wrong. (Actually most of
the time, professional media is roughly right, what they report as
fact is such, and it's fairly easy to tell the difference, if one
knows what to look for.)

In any case, do the G preferrers trust the G party? If they don't, I
question whether or not they are really "G-preferrers." So could the
party investigate the winnability of an election? I would not expect
the party to put much effort into an unwinnable election. Rs and Ds
don't! They just do enough to maintain ballot position. (That's
something that could be fixed, it's a distortion of the system, in
fact. Fusion voting handles it, allowing true party support to be shown.)

> >Here are the typical voter's mistaken perceptions of the candidates'
> >positions, based on practically zero media coverage of G, and
> >disinformational coverage of D and R:
> >
> >G: 0.4
> >D: 0.5
> >R: 1.0

Now, what does this set of numbers mean? What is a "position"? I
woudl assume that voters are distributed across this one dimension,
ranked in order, so that D is at the median position. R is to the
extreme right, and G is at 40%.

If so, 45% of the voters would prefer G, 30% would prefer D, and 25%
would prefer R.

It's highly unrealistic as to positions. The G position is more
realistic. I.e., it would not be at 0, nor would the R and D common
(real position) be at 1.0, nor would the perceived R position be at 1.0.

It might more like this:

G: 0.2
D: 0.5
R: 0.8

Thus G would be 35%, D would be 30%, and R would be 35%. G could win.
(I made the numbers that way.)

>[quote]
>These are as seen by whom? All voters? Green voters? Surely the
>perceptions will be different?
>[/quote]
>
>Quite. Actually the Green-preferrers don't share other voters'
>media-induced mis-perceptions. The example was inaccurate in that
>regard, but it was a simplification. As I said, it would have been
>better for it to to be more accurate in that regard, but it made its
>point, and answered Dale's question, nevertheless.

Did Dale think so?

>
>[quote]
>D: 1.0
>R: 0.0
>G: Huh? What's that?
>[/quote]
>
>Most voters indeed haven't heard of the Greens, or don't know what
>they are, when they seem them on the ballot. In my example, I'm
>guessing that people regard G as only a little more progressive than
>D, because they know nothing of G.

Probably a poor guess. Most people probably think of third parties as
whack jobs. I don't get where the idea that people perceive the
Greens as only a little to the left of the Democratic party comes
from. Maybe by comparison with the Socialist Workers Party or
something. (Not a comment on the SWP, itself, and, remember, this is
about perception, not "reality.")

> >Voting results with Pluralty:
> >
> >Given the mis-perception about the distances, and about the matter
> >of winnability. The G voters correctly judge that, given their
> >(mistaken) information, their optimal strategy is to vote for D. D
> >will often win. G candidates will never win, because their
> >preferrers always vote for D.
>[quote]
>Only if they beieve they are not in a plurality. That is, in fact, at
>this time, a realistic belief.
>[/quote]
>
>Let's commend Mr. Lomax's powers of ESP :-)

I do have such powers. And so what? It's easy to percieve imaginary
things, such a judgments and interpretations, outside the senses. In
fact, it's the only way.

>At this time such things can't be known. But conversations, public
>and private, in media and everywhere else, indicate that most people
>want the thing that the GPUS platform offers, and that pretty much
>everyone complains about the things that the GPUS platform would fix.

Some people are not complaining, they are taking responsibility for the planet.

What you are claiming, without evidence, is that your conversations
indicate that most people want what Green Part propaganda portrays as
what the Green Party would do. Maybe so. Do they believe that the
Green Party would *actually accomplish those things*?

>Given legitimately counted elections, using a rank-balloting voting
>system that meets the Condorcet Criterion (CC) and the Mutual
>Majority Criterion (MMC) and doesn't have the chicken dilemma, and
>if voters read some platforms before voting, I suggest that the GPUS would win.

Why not just suggest that a hand descends from the sky and makes the
Greens win?

Michael, your description of an informed voter is someone who reads
party platforms. But you already consider that the R and D platforms
are lies. Or at least the D platform is. What do you think about the
R platform?

We already know, everyone here accepts, that a decent voting system,
and even some that aren't so decent, like IRV, could make true
support for any party visible. That, however, won't win elections,
not by itself. It will just show the true position of the parties, as
to popularity, more accurately. I very much doubt that this shift
would immediately lead to many Green victories. It coudl lead to a
few, in a few places.

A Green strategy to win elections, if it depends on voters changing
their stripes, will almost certainly fail. Successful campaigns work
with people as they are. Some will be highly informed, some will be
paying attention to their kids, to their careers, to the Red Sox, and
other very important stuff. Life.

>We don't have a ranked voting system. But I suggest that GPUS would
>win anyway, if people read platforms and voted in their own
>perceived best interest, using optimal Plurality strategy (Combine
>votes on the most winnagle acceptable candidate).

I've written many times that major reform could be accomplished
without moving from Plurality. It would help if a majority
requirement were instated, i.e,. runoff voting, and it would help if
Approval were used, i.e., Count All the Votes. It would help more if
Range or Bucklin were used, and probably, at first, Bucklin would be
more useful.

But the key shift would be developing *non-electoral* political
process. How does the Green Party govern itself? If it used Asset to
create a fully representative governing assembly, I'd predict that,
in short order, the Green Party would become the leader. To stop
that, the other parties would have to imitate it.

>[quote]
>Therefore sane political strategy
>would be to work for fusion voting or at least a voting system that
>allows additional preferences to be expressed. Or for proportional
>representation systems, multiwinner, with enough seats being elected
>in each district that a Green might have a chance.
>[/quote]
>
>Maybe "fusion voting" is some sort of Democrat-progressive electoral
>allliance? :-)

Given a party system, fusion voting is simply a kind of freedom.
Political parties gain ballot position and should be able to put any
candidate the party chooses in that position. I saw fusion voting
fail in Massachusetts. The argument? "Voters would be confused."

I'm amazed how many "Democrats" don't trust democracy at all.

>As for the reforms you speak of, I suggest that they can't happen
>without first electing (via Plurality) a party that offers them.

See, I don't depend on conditions. You do, Michael. You think that
*this specific thing must happen before we can transform politics.*

I'm declaring that politics will be transformed, without knowing just
how it will happen. There are *many* ways it could happen. It's like
seeing that a dam is under pressure, and starting to crack. Where
will it break? It doesn't matter, it will break sooner or later. Push
a little in the right place, it might break today. At least a leak
might start up, and what happens with a leak is that it grows.

The Green Party does not offer any advanced voting system other than
IRV. Am I incorrect on that?

> >Consequently, with G never winning, the media tell the voters that
> >the election results are confirming the prediction that no one but D
> >and R can ever win. So the G preferrers strategy of voting continues
> >to be perceived by them as their optimal strategy, and G will never win.
>
>[quote]
>Unless they actually organize, create their own information network
>[/quote]
>
>Oh, is that all they need to do. Hopeflly Mr. Lomax will inform the
>Greens that they need to organize :-)

They do. They need to organize in a way that has never been seen
before. They *are* organized, but in a way that is practically
assured to keep them weak.

I will assert as evidence the apparent weakness. How many Green Party
canvassers have come to my door? How many have I seen on the streets
of Northampton -- a politically progressive town? How many
invitations have I, as a voter, received to participate in creating
Green Party platforms and structures? Who has *ever* offered to sit
down with me in person to discuss my concerns and to connect me with
the Green Party?

These things don't take money. They take people committed to the
Party. Do those people exist, Michael?

(I'm sure they do, but how many are there, and what are they doing to
light up the Party?)

>Create information networks that can reach all Americans. Is that
>all they need to do! :-)

Possibly! What would that take? Do you have any idea of how easy this
might be, if it is actually declared as a goal with a few Greens
standing for it? What percentage of the population do you think
support the Green Party?

Suppose it's 5%. You think it would be many more, in elections, but
now I'm talking about *real support*. Not merely voting.

Okay, one in twenty people is a Green supporter. How many people
could you call, Michael? I just went through a training where part of
it was calling people. Not lists of people we were given, through we
were given a few of those. It was people we knew. Many people called
hundreds. I had the story I didn't know anyone. That wasn't true, I
knew maybe fifty people to call, I was relatively disconnected on that level.

What would you say? Well, part of this process would be training in
how to communicate. (Most people would not be able to be effective at
a major campaign, "out of the box.") That alone could make
participation worthwhile for volunteers! They would gain value
entirely aside from the political goal. Look there are *lots* of
people, millions, who know how to do this. Are they being invited to
participate by the Green Party?

My guess? Green Party leaders are a bit like Michael, in his
sarcastic comment above. They've got it knocked. They don't need any
help. After all, they are Leaders. Famous, etc.

If there is one who is different from this, that could make all the
difference in the world, if another will join him or her. It takes at
least two. Three is better. Beyond that it's downhill.

>[quote]
>s,
>determine when the time is ripe, and, when it is, vote only for their
>own candidate.
>[/quote]
>
>Mr. Lomax, presumably, will let us know when the time is ripe. Until
>then, presumably Mr. Lomax would have people continuing to vote Democrat.

No, Michael is being really stupid here. The decision of ripeness
would be made by Green Party consensus process. Not by me, unless I
became pert of such a process.

"People" will continue to vote how they choose. Some will vote
Republican, some will vote Democrat, some will vote Green, some will
vote Libertarian, some will vote however they feel on election day,
some will toss a coin, some will pour over information and rate
candidates and platforms and wrack their brains, and some will sleep
in. And I have no idea which of these is best, and they all might be
appropriate for some.

For example, I think that Republican voters should sleep in. :-) Call
it beauty rest.

> >Voting results with Approval:
> >
> >The G voters, believing that the only way to prevent R from winning
> >is to elect D, of course approve D. But they like G more, and they
> >have no reason to not approve G as well, The G voters are a lot more
> >nulmerous than they think they are.
>
>[quote]
>Hopefully, by that time, there will be a better voting method in use,
>and that's a project that the Greens could take on. Unfortunately, it
>appears that they have taken on IRV, which could seriously backfire
>for them.
>[/quote]
>
>If the progressives are a mutual majority,then IRV won't "backfire"
>for the Greens.

They aren't, Michael, or, more accurately, there is *zero* evidence
that they are except in a few areas, where Greens already
occasionally win (or other progressives). IRV will backfire as it did
in Burlington.

>If the progressives weren't a mutual majority then a progressive CW
>could lose to a Republocrat. But only if some progressives rank a
>Republocrat over the other pogressives, and only if the CW has low
>1st choice support and gets immediately eliminated.

I suppose if I worked at it, it might be possible to understand this
statement, but I'm insufficiently motivated.

>I expect that the progressives would vote as a mutual majority, and
>so that won't be a problem.

What do you mean by "progressives," here?

>But it would always remin true that the elimination of a CW could
>result in a dis-satisfied majority, who would vote to replace IRV
>with a CC-complying method, preferably Woodall or Benham.That would
>be fine. I've written to the Greens to suggest that Woodall or
>Benham (but preferably Woodall) might be a better platfdorm proposal
>than IRV. But if the Greens want to start with IRV, and maybe later
>replace it with Woodall, that's fine too.

Be sure not to neglect the frammistan and watch out for the Jabberwock.

>[quote][
>The Greens really should select some "delegates" to the
>voting systems community, learn about voting systems, and then trust
>what they come back with.
>[/quote]
>
>The GPUS are quite satisfied with IRV. That's fine.

Does that demonstrate something about their intelligence, character,
and desire for deep understanding?

> If they later don't like the elimination of a Green CW, then they
> can join with the non-MM voters to form a majority that will
> replace IRF with Woodall.

Michael, did I ever mention that you are insane? That you appear to
have learned almost nothing from, what, twenty years of voting systems study?

> >Consequently, the election results show G and D very close in their
> >vote-totals. Evidentlyl (in this example, but maybe in the actual
> >U.S. too), there are actually very few who really prefer the D
> >policies to the G policies. That's obvious from the voting results.
> >
> >So then, in the next election, the G voters know that they needn't
> >approve D. They elect G.
>
>[quote]
>There is a fundamental error here. Suppose the G and D votes are
>indeed close (and D wins). What is not shown by that is actual
>preference for G over D.
>That's why you need Range or Bucklin to
>accomplish a plan like this. And, in fact, a G victory would come sooner.
>[/quote]
>
>I was asked by Dale about a comparison of Plurality and Approval.
>That's what I discusssed. Proposal of rank methods isn't relevant to
>that discussion.

The plan is the plan, regardless of what Dale asked.

>Bucklin needs a definintion a lot more complicated than that of IRV,
>if it is to pass MMC. But Bucklin's MMC compliance would be
>meaningless and worthless anyway, due to Bucklin's chicken dilemma.

Why should I care about chickens and MMC? I care about election
system *performance,* not abstract criteria, except for some very
simple ones. I see Bucklin as being quite easy to vote, the "dilemma"
is made up, imaginary, it only exists for people who are *obsessed*
about trying to wring the last iota of game-theoretical optimization
out of a *single vote*, which is all that we decide.

Not normal people.

>[quote]
>There might be as many or more D voters adding an approval for G as
>there are G voters adding an approval for D.
>[/quote]
>
>D and R are perceived as the only winnable parties. D preferrers
>therefore have no incentive to approval G. The G+D ballots are
>ballots of strategically compromising G preferrers.

Ah, this is *so stupid.* You propose that people "really" prefer G. A
D preferrer who wants to move the Democratic party in the Green
direction, and who does not fear that the vote will cause the Green
Party to win -- or would not seriously mind that outcome -- has much
reason to approve the G. It costs nothing. So, it seems, you would
want to assume that Greens will approve D and G, but Ds will only approve D.

No wonder you think the problem is simple. Your undertanding leads
you to think that the G vote is all Green preferrers. How will you
know? Intuition? What?

>[quote]
>What happened, by the
>way, to the media campaign to convince people that D and R were
>different? Did the media suddenly wake up, say, "My gosh, I have been
>deceiving people for decades, my whole career has been a big lie, so
>now I'm going to tell the truth: R and D are completely identical and
>the only different party here is G."
>[/quote]
>
>No. In my example, the media never did other than propagating the
>disinformation that D and R are significantly different, and the
>only winnable parties.

So they will continue that propaganda. Why does it stop working?

>But the G preferrers still prefer G to D. When they find that G is
>winnable, they no longer approve D.

And at that point, any D preferrers stop approving G. I'd suggest
that before spending serious money on a political campaign, one
should have a clue as to what is actually happening.

Apparently the media propaganda about winnability stops working. But
the propaganda about R/D difference? Does it matter?

>[quote]
>Somehow I don't think so. So people will *still believe* that the
>party's positions are as the *campaign* has pretended.
>[/quote]
>
>My example didn't posit otherwise. But the G preferrers still like G
>more than D.

By definition.

>(In the actual U.S., of course, Green preferrers don't think that R
>and D are different, or that G is anything like similiar to D.)

Eh? If they don't think R and D are different why do they vote for
Ds, which is your explanation for the low Green vote? Why would they
waste their vote on a D, when they could at least build party
strength by voting for G? Your whole story, Michael, has the G
preferrers mistakenly voting for D because they believe the
winnability propaganda, but it's also necessary that they believe in
the difference, or they would not Favorite Betray. There would be no
gain from it.

So, from the definitions being given, the G-preferrers in the best
year got 2.74% of the vote.

In fact, I think that G-preferrers are more numerous than that.
Michael would prefer to be "right" than to actually seek the reality
here. His story that "in the actual U.S., ... Green preferrers don't
think that R and D are different," makes no sense, unless they are
really that small in number. Of course, that was 2000, where the
Greens had a relatively charismatic candidate -- at least to some, to
me, Nader has the charisma of a nail.

In the most recent Presidential election, the G candidate got 0.36%
of the vote. In 2008, it was 0.12%. (I think that Obama definitely
attracted a lot of votes for a very obvious reason, and I know my own
kids, normally not involved in politics, were jumping up and down
when he was elected in 2008. The world is changing, and I've watched
this one coming for a long time.)

>[quote]
> So when the
>Green Party leaders start telling people to vote G only, the D's are
>far less than thrilled. They stop voting for G.
>[/quote]
>
>In my example, then never started voting for G, in Plurality or Approval.

Not in Plurality, usually. (Some do for varous reasons). In Approval,
you simply make up that they won't. In Bucklin, many will. Maybe a quarter.

>[quote]
> If the Gs actually
>did manage to come up to parity, R may win, because of the vote
>splitting.
>]/quote]
>
>The G preferrers, believing media disinformation about winnability,
>don't stop approving D till the approval totals show that G is winnable.

The approval totals do not, alone, show that. Further, voters are not
controlled by the party. Until parity is reached, it's not "media
disinformation." It's simply what's so. Yes, there is a point where a
Green victory becomes possible. It becomes possible before it is a
safe strategy. However, this is all irrelevant if the G-preferrers
are not approving Ds all along because D and R are the same.

>Of course, in the actual U.S. the Green preferrers know that there
>is an immense difference between Green and Dem,

"Immense"? No wonder they are so weak politically. They are *crazy*.

>and a negligible difference between Dem and Repub. That will make it
>easier for Green preferrers to risk a Repub victory, when they stop
>approving Dem.

It doesn't just make it "easy," it makes it a no-brainer. Why waste
an opportunity to vote for your favorite, when there is no cost?

> Anyone who reads the Green platform will know that, in comparison
> to the gulf between Green and Dem, there is no difference between
> Dem and Repub.

How do I learn about the difference between R and D by reading the
Green platform? Does the Green platform contain authoritative
information about R and D?

> Therfore, there will then be no incentive to vote for Dem, in
> Plurality or Approval.

Non sequitur.

>I wouldn't even rank Dem in IRV, though IRV meets LNHa. The Dems
>aren't even good enough to deserve that.

Mike, it's simple: you are insane. I do get it: you are being
consistent with your story. The insanity is that you believe your own
made-up story.

>[quote]
> And then the Green Party is demolished for practically a
>generation, at least.
>[/quote]
>
>Who knows what Mr. Lomax means. I'm not claiming that the Greens
>will ever win.

Not the way you are thinking, for sure.

> I only claim that it woudl be better if they did, and that they'd
> win if people read platforms and voted strategically in their best interest.

If wishes were horses....

>
>[quote]
>Remember, in the scenario, Greens believe the media the same as
>everyone else. So they will believe that their leadership betrayed
>them with really bad advice.
>[/quote]
>
>In my example, the G preferrers vote D in Plurality. They begin by
>approving G+D in Approval, but then approve only G.

They may do that at some point. How do G-preferrers decide how to
vote? Do they have any party discipline?

>If R wins thereby, and the believe that R and D differ greatly,
>they'll indeed regret not approving D.

Right. And if they don't believe that, they never would have voted
for D anyway. But a consequence of this is that "true G-preferrers"
are only a few percent at most. Far short of winnable.

To shift that would involve educating voters as to how the Green
party sees the situation, and what it plans to do.

But what will be much more effective will be winning a few partisan
elections and *demonstrating* that they can make a difference. That
can happen if Greens focus their efforts. If they waste their
resources on unwinnable elections, they won't win the winnable ones,
or they won't be able to keep the offices. Triage.

> That's where my example differs from reality. When voters find out
> what GPUS offer, they'll know that the R-D difference is
> negligible, and that it doesn't matter which of {D,R} wins.

Okay, I just went to read the GPUS platform.

>[quote]
>Approval does not handle this situation gracefully.
>[/quote]
>
>Approval requires strategy.
>
>[quote]
> Bucklin would.
>[/quote]
>
>No. Bucklin only slightly improves on Approval's strategy situation,
>and fully retains the chicken dilemma.

From your point of view, not from that of most voters. And the real
power of Bucklin and Range would show up in repeated elections.

>
>[quote]
>Range could.
>[/quote]
>
>Score could encourage people to vote more honesty, mitigating
>people's strategic errors.

The strategy for Score is very similar to that for Approval, but
there is more flexibility.

>
>[quote]
>Two-round systems, and especially with Approval in the
>first round, and, say, a mandatory runoff as in Arizona.
>[/quote]
>
>No. Lomax's 2-round systems fail both FBC and MMC.
>
>Even if Lomax's Bucklin is the more complicated MMC-complying
>version, that MMC compliance is rendered meaningless by Bucklin's
>chicken dilemma.

I've never seen a description of the chicken dilemma that convinced
me it was a dilemma, rather than merely a decision to be made.

Voting systems function poorly or well depending on the environment.
I've not seen a realistic FBC failure mode for a two-round system
like the Arizona proposal, which is essentially for nonpartisan elections.

Michael's dogmatic style of argument about voting systems, using
"criteria" rather than Bayesian Regret, has *never* impressed me. A
system can easily "fail" a criterion while improving voter satisfaction.

> >
> >In thiis example there is a 1-dimensional continuum on which the
> >candidates are positioned.
> >
> >In this example there are two identical candidates.
> >
> >In this example, Plurality and Approval soon give different results.
>
>[quote]
>There is a contradictory assumption. Michael is supposing something
>that has *no effect on voters,* i.e., *real positions* as distinct
>from *apparent positions.* Voters only know apparent positions. Isn't
>that obvious?
>[/quote]
>
>Yes. What's Lomax's problem?

I have a problem? Where? There is a contradictory assumption.
Identical candidate, different results.

>Dale asked about two identical parties. I provided them in my
>example. He didn't say that they had to be perceived as identical.

If they are not perceived as identical, their "identity" is
irrelevant to election results. As I wrote, "isn't that obvious"?

>In what way does Mr. Lomax think that's contradictory. Yes, the
>media-disinformation contradicts the actual facts.

What "actual facts"? How are they identified or measured?

Ah. I get it. The Standard. Michael Ossipoff's Opinions. The Touchstone.

>[quote]
>Voters are, also generally, *party-loyal," at least
>many are, maybe most, maybe with occasional exceptions.
>[/quote]
>
>Yes, lesser-evil Dem voters show remarkable loyalty to the Dems. I'm
>not saying that anything will change.

Then your stand is useless. It isn't really a stand, it's just "I'm right."

>]quote]
>Michael has raised and mixed *two issues.* First, the "real
>positions" of G, D, and R candidates, if elected. Opposed to this are
>the "campaign positions," which differ. But with the G candidates,
>there *are no real positions,* because "real positions" means actions
>while in office. We only know what they *say* that they will do.
>[/quote]
>
>...but that doesn't mean that we have to keep re-electing two unlike
>parties with a known bad track-record in office.

Individual have track records in office. I had occasion to work with
Senator Kennedy's office on one of our adoptions, where we had a
problem with Homeland Security. I saw exactly why he remained in
office so long. He totally served constituents, and efficiently. It
was amazing.

He was far more effective than Kerry. And I like Kerry.

>[quote]
> Once
>in office, you can depend on behavior being different, for nearly
>everyone. The world looks different to people with power than to
>people without it. Indeed, we could say that the current political
>system *works* because politicians don't keep all their promises.
>That would not suddenly change if a G was elected.
>[/quote]
>
>Mr. Lomax thinks that GPUS would abandon and disregard their
>platform, breaking their platform promises, if elected. He's welcome
>to that belief.

I have no belief on this, but I do have an expectation that GPUS
*candidates* will behave as human beings. And, in fact, from the
reading I did today, seems a lot of Green candidates that get elected
disaffiliate with the Greens. Why is that?

Are individual candidates breaking "platform promises" if they do
something different than the platform or fail to adequately push it?
Are we electing candidates or the Green Party? I asked above if there
was party discipline. This is a related issue.

>[quote]
>The second issue is the perception of relative vote strength, and
>particularly of first preferences. If the system has been approval,
>*we don't know first preferences,* except from bullet votes.* But the
>scenario proposes that most Gs are approving D also. Which cannot,
>with Approval, be distinguished from Ds also approving G.
>[quote]
>
>Wrong. If G is perceived as entirely unwinnable, then anyone
>genuinely preferring D would have no reason to strategically
>compromise by approving G. Therefore, the G+D ballots are those of G
>preferrers.

This is black-and-white thinking. There are Ds who prefer D over G,
but relatively weakly. They will approve a G candidate under some conditions.

Mike has this whole underlying story of R/D identity on which he
bases his assumptions. If that story is believed, no G who accepts
the story will approve a D.

Mike forgets that many people vote for the person, not the party.
This might be most of the electorate. He's thinking purely in terms
of party affiliation.

>[quote]
>No problem with Bucklin. Even if Bucklin collapses to Approval, the
>first preference data is obvious.
>[/quote]
>
>Of course that's true of MCA as well. But voting an acceptable
>candidate below1st choice in Bucklin would be poor u/a strategy. In
>a u/a election,

(incomplete sentence). That does not match my understanding of
Bucklin strategy at all. Voting in first position for a merely
approved candidate is Favorite Betrayal of a kind, when lower
positions are available, and only create some kind of risk in a
multiple majority situation (which can be addressed in different
ways.) Voters are going to rank the candidates sincerely, and if they
have strong preference, they will skip ranks. Bucklin is *not* a pure
ranked system, it is fed with a Range ballot.

If parties keep ballot position based on first preference data, and
even if multiple votes in first rank are allowed, a true party
supporter would rank the party top, period. (If multiple top is
allowed, then the vote would, for determining party popularity, be
divided. I pointed out that with Approval this issue must be
addressed. It's not a problem with the Arizona elections because
those are nonpartisan.)

>[quote]
> (IRV is easy to vote, it's part of its
>appeal, but the cost is too great, both literally, in the canvassing,
>but in poor results, on occasion, as well, and the situation of a
>third party coming up to parity is exacty where it breaks down.)
>[/quote]
>
>Mr. Lomax is trotting out the usual IRV criticism. IRV doesn't break
>down. IRV will always choose from the MM-preferred set if the MM
>rank sincerely.

Glad I'm coming to the end of this. IRV *did* break down in
Burlington, with sincere votes. Favorite Betrayal would have fixed it.

>IRV can fail to elect a CW, if you want to call that a breakdown.

It is, generally. A more serious breakdown is a serious loss of utility.

> Maybe what Mr. Lomax means is that the non-MM voters have a
> favorite-burial need in IRV. That's ok, because, if my policy
> prefrences are any good, then I'll be in a MM. If you don't have
> that confidence, then maybe you should reconsider your policy
> preferences. IRV gives the very best freedom from strategy need, to
> a MM, at the price of favorite-burial need for the non-MM voters.

I have no idea what Michael is saying here. I'm not sure I want to know.

>If you want to extend better freedom from strategy need to all
>voters, if you want to honor all majorities,however constituted, by
>always electing the CW, then use Woodall or Benham instead of IRV,
>in the Green scenario

I would always include a CW in a runoff, if different from a primary
method winner. So the method will elect a *Persistent CW*. It is also
likely to elect, instead, a Range winner, because of differential
turnout effects.

>For current conditions, I don't propose IRV, due to its FBC failure.

That's a breakdown condition that Michael just denied.

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

This is useful as an exploration of how certain people think. It's
not just Ossipoff. It's much of the Tea Party movement. It's the
Solutions video

At 11:52 AM 5/25/2013, Michael Ossipoff wrote:
>
>Mr. Lomax says:
>
>Michael mixed up some assumptions, confusing everything with this
>Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee argument, which is actually irrelevant.
>
> That has no clear meaning, so one can only look for Mr. Lomax's
> meaning in what follows:

What part of "irrelevent" doesn't Mike understand?"

If a set of voter consider a set of candidates to be clones, they
will not sacrifice values such as voting sincerely in order to avoid
a loss of one member of the set to another. Mike, however, argues
that R and D are *actually* identical. What a candidate *actually*
is, aside from how this affects perception, is irrelevant to voting
systems, which are, after all, our primary topic here.

>
>>He imagines that only the Green voters realize the True Situation.
>

>Again, Mr. Lomax gives us his religious capitalization.

Right. I'm expressing a religious view, that of Ossipoff. I use this
kind of capitalization to express that something is Important. To
somebody. Most usage is indeed critical; I do, however, occasionally
capitalize a word to give it a special meaning. I will often
capitalize Reality, to emphasize that I'm writing about a single
"object," as distinct from the vast array of human opinions about reality.

My training warns me to be suspect of *any* such assignment of
Importance. However, we do express what are called "committed
assessments," based on data and experience, which may include
analysis, but as stands, not as Truth.

>Each faction has a different perception. Each faction believes its
>percetion to be true.

Not necessarily. But, yes, this is common.

>But if there's a perception that Lomax disagrees with, he'll likely
>refer to it with capitals, to imply that someone believes it out of
>religious dogmatism.

That R and D are "identical" is not a perception, it's a judgment or
assessment. We could start with the simplest, undeniable difference:
they have different names. Certainly they have differing platforms
(which is related to the name difference). Ossipoff's usage of
"religious" is here appropriate, as meaning held with firm belief,
often impervious to evidence and argument. "Religious" can also refer
to a group belief, and that is also appropriate here. There are
plenty of people who agree with Ossipoff. Some of them would agree
with Ossipoff on this "identity" issue and disagree radically with
him on many other issues. Certain Libertarians, for example.

>In my example, the G preferrers don't realize the true situation
>(stipulated by me when I wrote the example)--namely the actual
>policy positions of the parties, or the winability of the G party.
>So Mr. Lomax isn't being entirely clear with us about what True
>Situation the G preferrers realize.
>
>And I again remind Mr. Lomax that, in my example, in the Plurality
>vote, there are no G voters.

In other words, there are *none* who realize the True Situation.

When I write "True Situation," with capitals, it refers to a belief,
which may or may not be what I called above a "committed assessment."
It could also be group-think. It could be relatively true or false.
The only relevant issue here is how it affects G voter strategy. Any
G-preferrer, under present conditions, who holds the belief in
"identical," will vote only for the Green Party, they will not
sacrifice their sincere vote for a strategic gain that is non-existent to them.

>If we're referring to the actual U.S. then i agree pretty much with
>the true situation as described by the Greens, as opposed to the
>true situation as described by the Republocrats.

What I keep pointing to is that "truth" is an illusion, and a
dangerous one. We do routinely assume that our judgments and
assessments may be relied upon, because we have no better
possibility. But anyone who personally investigates this will
discover that at least most of what we believe is made-up, invented,
often by a small child with very incomplete information and maturity,
some of it later. We did this to survive. It's necessary. However, it
also can severely limit us, constricting the possibilities that we
can recognize.

Mike has consistently interpreted my pointing to his belief itself as
if it were an affirmation of R/D *difference.* What I'm actually
affirming is that the statements "R and D are identical," and "R and
D are different" are both in the realm of interpretation, not in the
realm of Reality. Both statements are human responses to Reality, and
are only true in the sense that the reactions are real. And a
reaction we are describing is how people vote. That is measurable.
How people vote is real. How we interpret is not real in the same realm.

>I suggest that the Green platform's version of the true situation is
>better supported by evidence than is the Republocrat version of the
>true situation. But this forum isn't the place to argue that matter.

A platform is a statement of ideals, and it is a general and common
phenomenon in public and political polemic that we see what amounts
to "Our ideals are better than your practice."

I did read the GPUSA platform last night. A lot of great ideas. No
sign of grounding, which is because the Greens have very little
practice actually applying the ideals in a situation where they have
real power. Some of the platform is coming out of what I call the Bad
Guys theory. I.e, the problems of society are due to the Bad Guys,
them. This theory has long been held by reformers, and reforms fail
because of it. The reformers either completely fail to make any
changes, being rejected, or they actually succeed, sometimes at huge
social cost, they get rid of the bad guys and become the new Bad
Guys. Because they never addressed the root causes, what created the
Bad Guys, what enabled them and gave them power. In the simplest word,

Us.

Is that the Truth (TM)? No. It's a committed assessment, one which
empowers anyone who takes it on.

>So
>they bullet vote. Whereas the D's remain duped by the media, and
>think that G is close the position of D, so they also approve G,
>
>
>No, I never said that the D voters Approve G.

That's correct. He never said it. He denies the very possibility.

This is in Approval Voting. Under Plurality, with a perception that G
cannot win, there is no reason for a D-preferrer to vote for G, and
plenty of reason not to. The reasons not to also apply to Greens,
some of them, who, with Plurality, face a sometimes painful choice,
unless they believe in "no difference," in which case it is easy.
Indeed, that ease might provide some psychological explanation for
believing in "identity of D and R."

And then any actual consequence of the election of, say, the R, can
be rationalized as, "Well, it would have been the same under D, so
it's not my fault. Why are you looking at me? I just voted sincerely.
Are you saying there is something wrong with that?"

And so all those German voters in the 1930s, was it, who voted for
their favorite splinter party, have *no responsibility* for what came
next, right? It wasn't "us," it was "them." If only "they" had
realize that Our Party was the best and had voted for it, this
horrible war would never have happened. So, next time, vote for Us.
We are Never Wrong.

In life, we all make mistakes. We do things that we would not repeat.
My 11-year-old daughter just told me about something she recalls me
doing when she was six. It devastated her, and I felt deep grief when
she told me. I don't even remember it. But the story rings true.

By the way, people mostly don't recall these things, though the
events form our character and identity. That my daughter is coming up
with this at 11 is a sign that she is going through a deep process,
one with the potential to free her so that she becomes fully
self-expressed. I'm working with a man who is fifty, and his
traumatic event, that dominated his life for the next 45 years,
happened when he was five. I very much doubt that he'd ever have
discussed it with his mother, who told him what she told him at that
age. His mother died recently.

Under Approval, however, that very situation (a belief in R/D
domination) makes such an Approval almost cost-free. D voters will do
it for any of many reasons. Maybe they like the candidate personally.
I'd have probably approved Nader at one time. I might still, though
that choice has become much more complicated. I'm pretty likely to
approve a Green, but I might also approve a Libertarian. It's become
pretty unlikely, under present conditions, that I'd approve a
Republican. These are just my present assessments, they are not
proposed as ideal or normative. Some R voters will also approve a
Green. More are likely to approve a Libertarian. I'm expressing
political stereotypes, and stereotypes often arise out of actual
behavior that's been observed.

>which makes some sense from Michael's "deluded position" scenario.
>Michael really did not explain this well.
>
>
>Did I not say that the D voters didn't approve G? Ok, I'm saying it now.

Mike did not address at all the possibility, he simply assumed that
there were no such approvers of G. He completely neglects such
factors as the incumbent advantage (what's the real basis for that?),
reasons why someone who might *like* the G party -- or only the
platform or candidate -- there is a difference between the party and
the platform and the candidates themselves -- in spite of the implausibility.

Yes. If no D voters or others approve of the G, then the G vote under
approval will show true G preference. But how would a G strategist know?

> .
>[quote]
>[Writing what is below, I realized what these 1D issue space numbers
>might mean. R being at 1.00 is *really strange* No voter is to the
>outside of the R party position?
>[/quote]
>
>Nothing was said about that. Maybe some voter are at 1.5

Then numbers were used without any specification of what they mean,
what they are describing, which is characteristic of ungrounded polemic.

>[quote]
>In the scenario Mike proposed as the
>perceived position -- which is how people will vote --, G dominates
>the range of 0 - 0.45, D the range of 0.45 - 0.75, and R the range of
>0.75- 1.0. So G does win, with 45% of the voters, under Plurality.
>[/quote]
>
>Nonsense. Mr. Lomax wants to assume that the voters are uniformly
>distributed along the entire political spectrum. That was never stipulated.

I was here, assuming a particular interpretation that seemed to make
some sense to me, and that produced the outcome Mike was claiming.

>I meant only what I said, when telling my example.

Mike has made statements like this many times. It discriminates
between what was said and the underlying assumptions. With extreme
care, Mike might actually manage to do what he just claimed. But what
I've found is that we communicate far more than we intend to
communicate. This is especially true with a high-bandwidth
communication channel, such as in-person (maximal bandwidth, at least
so far), or video or voice. Text is seriously low bandwidth. But,
still, much can be seen. That "seeing" is not rigorous or definitive,
it's subject to lots of error.

>[quote]
>But with Approval, D could win. Michael is proposing a scenario that
>it is believed that the Greens are the majority party.]
>[/quote]
>
>If we can decipher the meaning of that ungrammatical sentence, for D
>to win doesn't require G to have a majority. It only requires D+G to
>be a majority.

The second sentence is not a consequence of the first. It was a
separate but related statement. I.e.,

1. With Approval, D could win.
2. Michael is proposing a scenario *in which* it is believed (by
Michael, or defined by him as such) that the Greens are the majority party.

"Majority," with raw approval, should also have been "Plurality" party.

>
>But if G wins when the G voters approve only G, that's because G
>indeed has a majority.

Mike made the same error. Plurality. Essentially, Mike agrees with
me. But failed to see the agreement, it seems.

>[quote]
>Behind Michael's thinking is total political naivete. Most candidates
>for office are, in fact, dedicated to public service.
>[/quote]
>
>:-)
>
>What's that about naivete? :-)

It's an observation based on experience. "Most candidates" refers to
candidates when they first run for office. That was their original
intention, public service. It remains their view of how they see
themselves, except for some who so grossly violate their own
principles that they are living in shame. I think most successful
politicians at this time do have some level of shame, which is
heavily rationalized and covered up.

It's difficult to tell without having a deep conversation with one.

>[quote]
> What it takes
>to get elected under the current system requires a lot of
>compromises, but people still believe that's what they are there for.
>[/quote]
>
>:-) That must be why they pretty much all take bribes and do as
>their bribers tell them.

Mike is revealing his world-view. He believes this. And the belief
guarantees that he will remain powerless, unable to realize any
actual transformation of society. He has defined "bribe" in a way
that takes it entirely outside of normal usage, to be true, the word
must be mangled to mean "any gift, donation, or consideration that
motivates an action that would not otherwise be taken."

>
>By the way, did you ever seacrh, on the Internet for "Al Gore, East
>Liverpoll, Jim Hightower"?

Just did. Political polemic. Absolutely not an objective assessment.
The language drips with blame and condemnation. The truth?
Essentially, the story asserts something without anything but
circumstantial evidence. Alternative possibilities are ignored or
dismissed. The writer has a *belief* about what happened, and has
selected facts and interpretations that support the belief. It is
far, far from what might be called "proof." And believing in this
story, then, takes the believer outside of the circles of power,
because it rejects those circles and all who move in them.

http://www.debatethis.org/gore/enviro/hightower.html

It's not that the story is "false," necessarily. Some of it is fact,
but much is highly interpretive. It is that it is disempowering.

What I wrote about candidates for office, above, was not asserted as
"true," but as a way of looking at the situation that empowers
possible conversation with such people. It looks at the situation in
a way that -- *usually* -- would connect with the candidates through
their belief -- and knowledge -- about themselves. It would address
their problems with campaign finance *sympathetically*, instead of
through blame and attack.

Will this approach work? Nothing is guaranteed, but it is *far more
likely to work* than the approaches that Mike, and, apparently, Jim
Hightower, have been following.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Hightower

Notice: Hightower is a highly experienced and knowledgeable
progressive. He apparently does not believe in the R/D identity
theory, since he has continued to work for the election of certain
Democrats. The piece on Gore was written in 2000, when Hightower was
campaign manager for Nader, it was a month before the election. It
must be read in that context.

My stand is that we are responsible for the *effects* of what do,
including what we write. What was the effect of that piece in context?

Hightower rationalized that it wasn't Nader who caused the election
of Bush, it was Gore, by losing his home state of Tennessee. The Gore
loss in 2000 can be ascribed to many, many factors, many of which,
shifted, would have caused Gore to win. Under those circumstances, if
we want to ascribe causation, it can be ascribed to *any of these
factors,* because agents involved with each one could have shifted
the result. Hightower is, in that comment, avoiding responsibility.
Not an endearing quality in someone involved in politics.

>[quote]
>And D and R candidates do take, personally, different positions. You
>can see it in voting patterns. They do not vote identically, the
>party differences are clear and easily documentable. Michael, I'm
>sure, has in mind exceptions to this, where D and R positions can be
>identical, as voted, even where rhetoric differs.
>[/quote]
>
>No one denies that Repubs and Dems can differ on some relatively
>insignificant policy actions.

As pointed out by another, "insignificant" is a highly personal
judgment. What is insignificant to one person may be crucial to
another. The question is whether or not the policy actions *matter*
to people. But, in the end, people will vote based on how the
situation appears to them, the "reality" does not matter, unless the
appearance changes through learning by the people involved, the voters.

And lots of people have made themselves relatively impervious to
learning. It's common. It's very human. Just as is any other kind of death.

>
>--------------------------------
>
>Now, this concludes my replies to Mr. Lomax. Today I made an
>exception by these two replies.
>
>After this reply, my non-reply to Lomax doesn't mean that he's said
>something irrefutable.It must means that I'm not going to waste my
>time again, as I just have done today.

Michael's return was accompanied by fervent protestations that he was
only going to reply to existing threads, to clarify his position. I
pointed out that he could come up with this excuse at any time, that
he obviously continued to read the list after unsubscribing, so he
would continually be exposed to new opportunities. He wrote to the
effect of, no, this time I'll stick to it. And yet he wrote at
enormous length, brief only compared to a writer of tomes like
myself, now acknowledging that this was an "exception." He's claiming
that this was a waste of time. He's probably right, as to any benefit
for him. I don't see any sign that he has derived any benefit from
it. I don't take that position as to myself. I learn things, matters
become clear or clearer to me, through reading and my own expression
and research. I look things up. I verify what people assert that
seems questionable to me. Indeed, if I know much compared to the
average bear, it's because I check out the claims of *critics*, even
those who have "viciously attacked" me. Those critics can sometimes
be the most valuable, they are not constrained by politeness.

I am responsible for benefit to myself. I cannot blame Mike for
wasting my time. I'll just re-affirm that his stands, as expressed in
this series of pieces, will maintain his state of disempowerment,
will validate his expectation that he won't be heard and that nothing
will change, and, to the extent that the Green Party follows his
thinking, it will do the same for the Party. It's like clockwork.

The other day, I watched a video on the Dust Bowl in the 1930s, which
included footage of Roosevelt, consummate politician, standing at a
whistlestop, in the middle of an utterly devastated area, his arm in
the arm of a young man -- Roosevelt could not stand without support
-- looking at them and telling them that he believes in their
determination to survive and to rebuild, and smiling a brave smile
that to my modern eye looks completely artificial. It's like you are
visiting a patient in the hospital, he just lost his arms and legs,
and smiling at him and telling him he will be fine, because he has
courage and gumption and is indominatable.

And they believed it and cheered -- and Roosevelt did do a great deal
for that area, and, for about the first time, science was applied,
paying people *not* to grow wheat started -- which then required
people to keep their land planted with cover that would not allow the
dirt to blow away -- and the dust storms abated. I was struck by what
Roosevelt actually did, in that speech, he reached out and confirmed
the greatness of the people. He knew what had caused the storms. It
had been "greed," though it could also be described as people just
going for what appeared to them to benefit them. It had been an
uncaring society that blamed the farmers for being stupid "Okies."

He didn't turn it around through blame against the companies that
sold farm machinery, against all those who supported farming marginal
land beause it gave them power, he turned it around through
*inspiring* people to recover, to take personal responsibility, to
work together. And then providing them with tools to make the changes
(such as contour plowing) as well as temporary basic support, i.e.,
relief. Roosevelt created the WPA as the largest employer in the
nation, and turned that idle labor into value for the future. It may
have been inefficient, but compared to welfare, it was phenomenally
responsible.

I'm no believer in Roosevelt as some kind of saint. But he
accomplished a great deal, "New Deal" is an appropriate name.

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

GPUS platform: linked from a What We Believe page at
http://www.gp.org/index.php/what-we-believe.html
Democratic platform: http://www.democrats.org/democratic-national-platform
Republican platform: http://www.gop.com/2012-republican-platform_home/
Libertarian platform: http://www.lp.org/platform

There is a great difference between the R and D platforms and the
platforms of the other parties. The R and D platforms are, first of
all, focused on an actual struggle for power between the two parties,
they are designed to appeal to different segments of the voting
population, and they each contain specific criticisms of the other party.

The G and L platforms differ from each other. The L platform is much
simpler and focused on a libertarian norm. The G platform is
progressive thinking isolated from the actual responsibilities of
power. I've read the G platform in the most detail, and it contains
many great ideas, that, in actual practice, would be shaped and
formed as a practical shift in values and policies and implementations.

I see the G party platform as similar in certain underlying
intentions as the D party platform, but the latter has been modified
to generate wider appeal and to stay closer to what Democratic
leaders regard as the center.

The R platform is focused on a very different approach to politics,
in ways that are stereotypically Republican, just as the Democratic
party platform and the other platforms can be readily seen as
stereotypical. The party platforms are relatively predictable, from
the party support bases.

Classically, progressives have not seen much success in actually
getting elected, but have managed to shift the center, on many
issues. That can be a legitimate goal for a minor party, to shift the
nearest major party -- and maybe the whole structure -- in their
direction. What were once wild progressive ideas are now mainstream.
Some of them.

[Michael Ossipoff]

Mr,. Lomax says:

 

[...]

 

 The G platform is
progressive thinking isolated from the actual responsibilities of
power.

 

Let's not imply that the Republocrats are acting with any responsibility.

 

The GPUS platform merely makes proposals about how they suggest doing things diffeently. That's what a platform is about.

 

 

 

I've read the G platform in the most detail, and it contains
many great ideas, that, in actual practice, would be shaped and
formed as a practical shift in values and policies and implementations.

 

Actual practice would be influenced by matters of feasibility, as regards details. But, unless the platform is written by liars (like the ones currently running the country), all of the goals of the platform would be sought-for and implemented to the best of the GPUS officeholders' ability.

 

 

 

 

I see the G party platform as similar in certain underlying
intentions as the D party platform

 

:-)

 

 

, but the latter has been modified
to generate wider appeal

 

To the extent that the Dem platform promises what the Dems have actually been doing, it couldn't have too much appeal, considering that Repubocrat politicians are regarded with contempt and disgust otherwise reserved for schoolground drug-dealters.

 

To the extent that the Dem platform contradicts what the Dems have actually been doing, are people stupid enough to believe it?

 

It's meaningless to compare the "appeal", when practically no one has looked at the GPUS platform, nor has any idea of what the Greens offer.

 

 

 

and to stay closer to what Democratic
leaders regard as the center.

 

...and what the media designate "the cener".  Namely, something between the Democrats and the Republicans :-)

 

Classically, progressives have not seen much success in actually
getting elected

 

Complete mass-media blackout might have something to do with that.

 

And the legitmacy of our elections depends on the legitmacy, and therefore the verifiability, of the vote-counting.

.

[Michael Ossipoff]

Having measured the lengths of this and Mr. Lomax's previouus posting, I'm replying to this one first or instead. This one's only about 16.5 display-screens long :-)

>
>Mr. Lomax says:
>
>Michael mixed up some assumptions, confusing everything with this
>Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee argument, which is actually irrelevant.
>
>  That has no clear meaning, so one can only look for Mr. Lomax's
> meaning in what follows:

[quote]

What part of "irrelevent" doesn't Mike understand?"

[/quote]

 

Don't be a twit. It isn't enough to use words with known meaning. You still need to be more clear with us about the meaning of what you're trying to say when you put words together.

[quote]

If a set of voter consider a set of candidates to be clones, they
will not sacrifice values such as voting sincerely in order to avoid
a loss of one member of the set to another. Mike, however, argues
that R and D are *actually* identical. What a candidate *actually*
is, aside from how this affects perception, is irrelevant to voting
systems, which are, after all, our primary topic here.

[/quote]

 

Dale had asked me about candidates actually identical. I merely answered his question.

 

Besides:

 

Whensome  voters are (in the opinion of some other voters) seriously mistaken about candidates' merits or acceptability, then they can make big mistake (as perceived by those other voters) when they strategically compromise. Better voting systems can minimize the societal harm done thereby.  So yes, the matter of actual merit (even if we don't agree on it) figures relevantly in the choice of voting systems.

 

>
>>He imagines that only the Green voters realize the True Situation.
>
>Again, Mr. Lomax gives us his religious capitalization.

Right. I'm expressing a religious view, that of Ossipoff.

 

I prefer the policies offered by the GPUS to the policies advocated and done by the Republocrats.

 

Only in Mr. Lomax's mind is that "religious".

 

Mr. Lomax's political "religiious" faith is stronger than mine. He believes in the Democrats even though he's seen what they do.

 

 

[quote]

I use this
kind of capitalization to express that something is Important. To
somebody.

[/quote]

 

...someone with whom Mr. Lomax disagrees :-)

 

[quote]

My training warns me to be suspect of *any* such assignment of
Importance.

[/quote]

 

Mr. Lomax is very puffed-up about his training, and seems to be citing it as the source of his self-perceived authority.

 

[quote]

 .

>But if there's a perception that Lomax disagrees with, he'll likely
>refer to it with capitals, to imply that someone believes it out of
>religious dogmatism.

[quote]

That R and D are "identical" is not a perception, it's a judgment or
assessment.

[/quote]

 

It's an observation of their conduct. But if you pretend that they're "The Two Choices", then you can view their differendes with a microscope, and perceive them as big.

 

 

[quote]

 We could start with the simplest, undeniable difference:
they have different names. Certainly they have differing platforms
(which is related to the name difference). Ossipoff's usage of
"religious" is here appropriate, as meaning held with firm belief,
often impervious to evidence and argument.

[/quote]

 

Evidence indicates that Repub and Dem are identical, unless viewed under yoiur microscope.

 

But we could quibble about that forever. Surely it's time to agree to disagree.

 

[quote]

 "Religious" can also refer
to a group belief, and that is also appropriate here. There are
plenty of people who agree with Ossipoff.

[/quote]

 

Oh, so anything that a group agree on is "religious" :-)

 

I suggest that what is more "religious" is official dogma and doctrine, such as the doctrine propagated to Lomax by his mass-media.

 

Using "religion" in its legitimate dictionary meaning, I don't believe in commenting on someone's religion, or religious doctrine, and so I won't do that. So, Mr. Lomax, how about we drop the references to religion, and the religious capitalization, when actual religion isn't even being referred to.

[quote]

 
>If we're referring to the actual U.S. then i agree pretty much with
>the true situation as described by the Greens, as opposed to the
>true situation as described by the Republocrats.

[quote]

What I keep pointing to is that "truth" is an illusion

[/quote]

 

Spare us the pretense. It's reasonable for people to vote according to facts as best they know them. Call facts "truth" if you want to. Capitalize "Truth" if you can't keep religion out of it, Abd Ul.

 

[quote]

, and a
dangerous one.

[/quote]

 

What's dangerous is when people so readily believe what they hear from the best-funded, everywhere-and-all-the-time-heard sources.

 

[quote]

We do routinely assume that our judgments and
assessments may be relied upon, because we have no better
possibility. But anyone who personally investigates this will
discover that at least most of what we believe is made-up, invented,
often by a small child with very incomplete information and maturity,
some of it later. We did this to survive. It's necessary. However, it
also can severely limit us, constricting the possibilities that we
can recognize.

[/quote]

 

Believe  your inner child if you want to, but you'll vote stupidly if you believe the continual mass-media propaganda.

[quote]

Mike has consistently interpreted my pointing to his belief itself as
if it were an affirmation of R/D *difference.* What I'm actually
affirming is that the statements "R and D are identical," and "R and
D are different" are both in the realm of interpretation, not in the
realm of Reality. Both statements are human responses to Reality

[/quote]

 

Responses to observations, made with or without a microscope.  ...or responses to what has been hammered into you over your entire life. I'm referring to you, Mr. Lomax.

 

[quote]

and
are only true in the sense that the reactions are real. And a
reaction we are describing is how people vote. That is measurable.
How people vote is real. How we interpret is not real in the same realm.

[/quote]

 

Mr. Lomax is fond of psychobabble.

>I suggest that the Green platform's version of the true situation is
>better supported by evidence than is the Republocrat version of the
>true situation. But this forum isn't  the place to argue that matter.

[quote]

A platform is a statement of ideals

[/quote]

 

Though a platform can express ideals, it's primarily a statement of policy proposals.

 

 

[quote]

, and it is a general and common
phenomenon in public and political polemic that we see what amounts
to "Our ideals are better than your practice."

[/quote]

 

I suggest that the GPUS policy proposals are better lthan the verbal and material conduct of the Republocrats.

 

Mr. Lomax (I call him by his last name because his birth-given first-name is unknown at this forum. Mr. Lomax, we use first names here. What is your initially-given first name?) wants to say or imply that, because the GPUS doesn't have a track-record for running the country, it's better that we instead trust someone who has a proven bad track record  :-)

 

An established crook is better than someone who advocates non-crookedness, but hasn't had the opportunity to prove, in office, that he wouldn't be a crook in office?

 

[quote]

I did read the GPUSA platform last night. A lot of great ideas. No
sign of grounding

[/quote]

 

Definition?

 

You like the proposals or you don't. There's a limit to how many minute details can be included,due to space considerations,and due to feasibility considerations,and due the democratic desirability of including the public in the later decisionmaking (via the GPUS's proposed expanded initiatives and referenda). It goes without saying that the GPUS haven't had the experience of running the country. Maybe Lomax would prefer a corrupt but experienced crook. If so then of course he's free to continue voting Democrat. The Founding Fathers fought so that he could have that right.

 

 

 

 

 

[quote]

 Some of the platform is coming out of what I call the Bad
Guys theory. I.e, the problems of society are due to the Bad Guys,
them. This theory has long been held by reformers, and reforms fail
because of it.

[/quote]

 

 

If there isn't something undesirable about the people against whom l you're running, then it's questionable whether you should run.

 

The faults of the Republocrats is a matter highly relevant to the candidacy of non-Republocrats.

 

Mr. Lomax is full of self-righteous, pretentious pontification about motivation. He delusionally believes himself to be an authority and expert on people and their motivations. He believes that he has the more-rightious-than-thou Answer.

 

[quote]

 The reformers either completely fail to make any
changes, being rejected, or they actually succeed, sometimes at huge
social cost, they get rid of the bad guys and become the new Bad
Guys. Because they never addressed the root causes, what created the
Bad Guys, what enabled them and gave them power. In the simplest word,

Us.

[/quote]

 

We can address our own shortcomings, and that needn't prevent us from voting for a platform whose proposed policies are better than the policies of other parties.

>So
>they bullet vote. Whereas the D's remain duped by the media, and
>think that G is close the position of D, so they also approve G,
>
>

[quote]

And then any actual consequence of the election of, say, the R, can
be rationalized as, "Well, it would have been the same under D, so
it's not my fault. Why are you looking at me? I just voted sincerely.
Are you saying there is something wrong with that?"

[/quote]

 

Correct. There isn't anythnig wrong with that.

 

Very good. Nader once pointed out that the Nader voters didn't split the vote. The Nader-policy-preferring Gore-voters split the vote, by their dishonest voting.

 

If (without help from Diebold) progressive honest voting causes a Democrat to lose, electing the Republican, that's a powerful landmark. It will be the day when we (that "we" doesn't include you, Mr. Lomax) can tell the lesser-evil voters:

 

 "We've shown today that we can dump your Democrat, and that we can and will do so every time. We won't accept your sleazy compromise. So, if you don't want to keep electing Republicans, then you might want to consider voting honestly for a change."

 

[quote]

And so all those German voters in the 1930s, was it, who voted for
their favorite splinter party, have *no responsibility* for what came
next, right?

[/quote]

 

Forget a 1930s election in another country. For our U.S. elections, optimal u/a Plurality strategy calls for combining votes on the most winnable acceptable candidate. If you don't regard the Republocrats as acceptable, then you don't vote for one of the two  right wings of the Republocrat party.

 

[quote]

 It wasn't "us," it was "them." If only "they" had
realize that Our Party was the best and had voted for it,

[/quote]

 

Spare us your "us/them" repetition. Yes, bad results can be attributed to stupid voting.

 

I don't belong to GPUS, though I vote for them. As I said, optimal u/a Plurality strategy consists of combinging votes on the most winnable acceptable party. To progressives (people who want governement that isn't corrupt, and is ethical and humane) most likely "acceptable" means "progressive". So then, for progressives, optimal u/a Plurality strategy means combiniing progressive votes on the most winnable progressive party's nominee.

 

I suggest that, without capitalizing it or calling it Our Party, the GPUS has shown itself to be most wiinnable progressive party. Therefore, I suggest that optimal u/a Pluralty strategy for progressivbes is to vote for the GPUS nominee.

 

You seem pre-occupied with religion, Abd Ul, but your religious capitalizations, and your attrribution of dogma to any political preference that you diagree with has been much over-done.

 

 [quote]

 ...this

horrible war would never have happened. So, next time, vote for Us.
We are Never Wrong.

[/quote]

 

The GPUS haven't said that, with or without capital initial letters. They've stated the policies that they propose and offer. Could you keep religion out of it, Abd Ul?

 

[quote]

Yes. If no D voters or others approve of the G, then the G vote under
approval will show true G preference. But how would a G strategist know?

[/quote]

 

If you genuinely prefer the Democrats to the Greens, and if you're certain that you don't need the Green as a lesser-evil compromise to beat the Republican, then you have no reason to approve the Green. Therefore, under those conditions, the G+D ballots can safely be counted as ballots of Green-preferrers.

>  .
>[quote]
>[Writing what is below, I realized what these 1D issue space numbers
>might mean. R being at 1.00 is *really strange* No voter is to the
>outside of the R party position?
>[/quote]
>
>Nothing was said about that. Maybe some voter are at 1.5

[quote]

Then numbers were used without any specification of what they mean,
what they are describing, which is characteristic of ungrounded polemic.

/quote]

 

Wrong. I explained at the outset that the numbers represent positions on a 1-dimensional political spectrum. I soon later explained that it was a policy-spectrum, referring to actual carried-out policies.

>[quote]
>In the scenario Mike proposed as the
>perceived position -- which is how people will vote --, G dominates
>the range of 0 - 0.45, D the range of 0.45 - 0.75, and R the range of
>0.75- 1.0. So G does win, with 45% of the voters, under Plurality.
>[/quote]
>
>Nonsense. Mr. Lomax wants to assume that the voters are uniformly
>distributed along the entire political spectrum. That was never stipulated.

[quote]

I was here, assuming a particular interpretation that seemed to make
some sense to me, and that produced the outcome Mike was claiming.

[/quote]

 

Don't confuse what you assumed with what i said.

>I meant only what I said, when telling my example.

[fquote]

Mike has made statements like this many times. It discriminates
between what was said and the underlying assumptions.

[/quote]

 

...or assumptions assumed or imagined by you to be "undelying".

 

 

 

 

>[quote]
>But with Approval, D could win. Michael is proposing a scenario that
>it is believed that the Greens are the majority party.]
>[/quote]
>
>If we can decipher the meaning of that ungrammatical sentence, for D
>to win doesn't require G to have a majority. It only requires D+G to
>be a majority.

[quote]

The second sentence is not a consequence of the first. It was a
separate but related statement. I.e.,

1. With Approval, D could win.
2. Michael is proposing a scenario *in which* it is believed (by
Michael, or defined by him as such) that the Greens are the majority party.

"Majority," with raw approval, should also have been "Plurality" party.

[/quote]

 

Mr. Lomax catches on fast.

 

Yes, if the Green preferrers all regarded D and R as identical, and unacceptable, and therefore voted, in Plurality, for G, and if G the G preferrers are a majority, then G would indeed win.

 

 

 

 

>
>But if G wins when the  G voters approve only G, that's because G
>indeed has a majority.

[quote]

Mike made the same error. Plurality. Essentially, Mike agrees with
me. But failed to see the agreement, it seems.

[/quote]

 

I have no idea what that is supposed to mean.

 

Yes, G should have won in Plurality. But, due to misperceptions about numbers and winnability, D won. But better information, from Approval election results, eventually caused G to win.

 

 

 

>[quote]
>Behind Michael's thinking is total political naivete. Most candidates
>for office are, in fact, dedicated to public service.
>[/quote]
>
>:-)
>
>What's that about naivete?  :-)

[quote]

It's an observation based on experience. "Most candidates" refers to
candidates when they first run for office. That was their original
intention, public service. It remains their view of how they see
themselves, except for some who so grossly violate their own
principles that they are living in shame. I think most successful
politicians at this time do have some level of shame, which is
heavily rationalized and covered up.

[/quote]

 

I'm not interested in Mr. Lomax's psychoanalysis of corruption. The universal Republocrat is readily observable, an well-known to everyone but Mr. Lomax.

[quote]

It's difficult to tell without having a deep conversation with one.

[/quot]

 

I'll leave that to Mr. Lomax. That's more his thing.

>[quote]
>  What it takes
>to get elected under the current system requires a lot of
>compromises, but people still believe that's what they are there for.
>[/quote]
>
>:-)  That must be why they pretty much all take bribes and do as
>their bribers tell them.

[quote]

Mike is revealing his world-view. He believes this.

[/quote]

 

Eveyone knows it. Both illegal bribes, and the legalized bribery known as contributions (when the contributions are from a person or corportation rich enough to afford to buy a politician.

 

[quote]

And the belief
guarantees that he will remain powerless

[/quote]

 

Haven't we heard enough of Mr. Lomax's theories of power? This is a voting-system forum.

 

[quote]

, unable to realize any
actual transformation of society.

[/quote]

 

I merely vote what seems the optimal u/a Plurality strategy for people who prefer as I do.

 

I'll leave the "transformation of society" theorizing to Mr. Lomax.

 

Society is very unlikely to be transformed, because you can't transform cattle. They're cattle.

 

[quote]

 He has defined "bribe" in a way
that takes it entirely outside of normal usage, to be true, the word
must be mangled to mean "any gift, donation, or consideration that
motivates an action that would not otherwise be taken."

[/quote]

 

Very many people agree that contributions from the rich are legalized bribes. That's pretty much universally agreed. ...as is the thorough corruption of the Republocrat politicians.

>
>By the way, did you ever seacrh, on the Internet for "Al Gore, East
>Liverpoll, Jim Hightower"?

Just did. Political polemic. Absolutely not an objective assessment.
The language drips with blame and condemnation. The truth?
Essentially, the story asserts something without anything but
circumstantial evidence. Alternative possibilities are ignored or
dismissed. The writer has a *belief* about what happened, and has
selected facts and interpretations that support the belief. It is
far, far from what might be called "proof." And believing in this
story, then, takes the believer outside of the circles of power,
because it rejects those circles and all who move in them.

[/quote]

 

There Mr. Lomax reveals himself as the True Believer that he is. So strongly does he want to believe in his Democrats, so strongly does he want to believe in Environmenal Hero All Gore, that no rationalzation is too ridiculous.

 

Hightower didn't write about a belief or interpretation. He related what happened to East Liverpool, when Gore made his promises to them and they trusted him.

 

Mr. Lomax desperately wants to believe in those who are in "the circles of power" From what he said above, he thinks that places him inside the "circles of power"  :-)

 

 

http://www.debatethis.org/gore/enviro/hightower.html

[quote]

What I wrote about candidates for office, above, was not asserted as
"true," but as a way of looking at the situation that empowers
possible conversation with such people. It looks at the situation in
a way that -- *usually* -- would connect with the candidates through
their belief -- and knowledge -- about themselves. It would address
their problems with campaign finance *sympathetically*, instead of
through blame and attack.

[/quote]

 

Forget blame and attack. But if you vote for corruption, you're stupid.

 

By all means, Mr. Lomax, have deep and sympathetic conversations with the politicians we're referring to.

 

But if you vote for them, you're a fool.

[quote]

My stand is that we are responsible for the *effects* of what do,
including what we write. What was the effect of that piece in context?

[/quote]

 

In the context of the about-to-happen election, it informed people about what one of the candidates is. That's relevant information for voters.

[quote]

Hightower rationalized that it wasn't Nader who caused the election
of Bush, it was Gore, by losing his home state of Tennessee.

[/quote]

 

Good point. Gore can't blame anyone but himself if people don't like him.

 

[quote]

The Gore
loss in 2000 can be ascribed to many, many factors, many of which,
shifted, would have caused Gore to win. Under those circumstances, if
we want to ascribe causation, it can be ascribed to *any of these
factors,* because agents involved with each one could have shifted
the result. Hightower is, in that comment, avoiding responsibility.
Not an endearing quality in someone involved in politics.

[/quote]

 

Telling facts that show what a particular candidate really is, when that's drastrically different from the candidatre's self-promoted image, is worthwhile. Hightower wasn't responsible for Gore's failure.  (If we pretend that Gore lost in a legitimate count).

 

 

[quote]

I don't see any sign that he has derived any benefit from

it [discusion with Mr. Lomax]

 

I doubt that I've claimed to beneft from it. :-)

 

Why reply then, when it's an obvious waste of time? Simply because I have a little extra time, and Mr. Lomax said a few things that were worthy of an answer, and then, once replying to the postings, and having some extra time, I might as well answer more comments. Also, when Democracy Chronicles publishes an article of mine, I probably have an obligation to answer crticisms of it, to the exttent feasible. I haven't answered Mr. Lomax's criticism of my article yet, but that was one thing that led me to answer postings.

 

[quote]

I am responsible for benefit to myself. I cannot blame Mike for
wasting my time. I'll just re-affirm that his stands, as expressed in
this series of pieces, will maintain his state of disempowerment,
will validate his expectation that he won't be heard and that nothing
will change, and, to the extent that the Green Party follows his
thinking, it will do the same for the Party. It's like clockwork.

[/quote]

 

More of Mr. Lomax's theories about empowerment. I have no idea what he's talking about.

 

Nothing will change? I certainlly don;'t claim the power to change society. I'll leave such grandiose ambitions to Mr. Lomax.

 

Mr. Lomax said above that I won't be heard. In other postings, he said that no one listens to me anymore, and asked if anyone agrees with me.

 

Mr. Lomax, I couldn't care less. Has it occurred to you that it's evident that I'm not trying for that?

 

Mr. Lomax is a political animal. I'm not.

 

In reply to his comments about people listening to me, or agreeing with me, I'll add this:

 

This forum is an Approval/Score forum. It should hardly be surprisig if few or no people here agree with me about advocacy of other methods.

 

However, Steve Unger and William Waugh seem to agree with me about "the Republocrat thesis".

 

And a number of people seem to agree with me that MJ isn't better than Score and Approval.

 

Bruce Gilson seems to agree with me that the rank-balloting ideal is good, and that it offers something that is missing from Approval.

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 06:40 AM 5/29/2013, Michael Ossipoff wrote:
>Mr,. Lomax says:
>
>[...]
>
> The G platform is
>progressive thinking isolated from the actual responsibilities of
>power.
>
>
>Let's not imply that the Republocrats are acting with any responsibility.

We are all responsible for what we do. "Responsibilities of power"
requires power. When one has little or no power, one has little or no
responsibility. Those who are not accustomed to power have no
experience with the realities of it, they can only imagine. It's just
what's so.

>The GPUS platform merely makes proposals about how they suggest
>doing things diffeently. That's what a platform is about.

Yes. However, Mike suggests, essentially, that we ignore the
Democratic platform because it's "lies," and that we believe the
Green platform because. Because why? Because they are the Good People?

Mind you, I have nothing against most Greens. I do have some personal
judgment of Nader, because he missed an historic opportunity, that,
among other things, could have empowered the Green party, and missing
it also left a lot of people dead in Iraq.

>I've read the G platform in the most detail, and it contains
>many great ideas, that, in actual practice, would be shaped and
>formed as a practical shift in values and policies and implementations.
>
>Actual practice would be influenced by matters of feasibility, as
>regards details. But, unless the platform is written by liars (like
>the ones currently running the country), all of the goals of the
>platform would be sought-for and implemented to the best of the GPUS
>officeholders' ability.

The Others are Liars, We are Honest. Mike still has not commented on
a basic fact: Green Party candidates that have won have often then
left the party. Why?

My comment is generic. The saying is that power corrupts. Believing
that completely would be cynical. Ignoring it and believing that only
Bad people are corrupted, We won't be, because we are Good people, is
incredibly naive.

Mike has put a lot of effort in to voting systems. Yet, in the end,
his proposal has become, just elect the Good people. Us. Then
everything will be fine. Get rid of those liars.

>I see the G party platform as similar in certain underlying
>intentions as the D party platform
>
>:-)

Yes. *Of course*! The Greens are somewhat like the Republicans' Tea Party.

>
> , but the latter has been modified
>to generate wider appeal
>
>
>To the extent that the Dem platform promises what the Dems have
>actually been doing, it couldn't have too much appeal, considering
>that Repubocrat politicians are regarded with contempt and disgust
>otherwise reserved for schoolground drug-dealters.
>
>To the extent that the Dem platform contradicts what the Dems have
>actually been doing, are people stupid enough to believe it?

If the problem is Stupid People, maybe we should take up knitting.
Voting systems are not going to improve anything.

>
>It's meaningless to compare the "appeal", when practically no one
>has looked at the GPUS platform, nor has any idea of what the Greens offer.

I had not looked. But I was unsurprised. None of it was unexpected.

>
> and to stay closer to what Democratic
>leaders regard as the center.
>
>
>...and what the media designate "the cener". Namely, something
>between the Democrats and the Republicans :-)

Mike believes, apparently, that there is no distance between the D
and R parties. He's certainly said that often enough. Elections,
however, to tend to ping-pong, with very few exceptions, back and
forth between those parties. That indicates, almost certainly, that
as to appearances -- which are everything, the center is between the
party positions, as each party, to survive, balances what will
attract the most voters (by definition, a centrist position) and what
will maintain financial and volunteer support. The latter may draw a
party away from the center, and then the party loses. There is thus a
natural restraint on the corruption of campaign finance. It can only
push so far without being a waste of money.

>
>
>
>Classically, progressives have not seen much success in actually
>getting elected
>
>
>Complete mass-media blackout might have something to do with that.

Feeble excuse. Progressives can win in small jurisdictions, and have.
And that could be built. The mass media pays little attention to
progressives because of the low vote counts. Hence the importance,
one would think, of voting systems that would allow true preference
to be expressed.

That is one of the real reasons to support Approval. Approval will
not radically change results, except in a few spoiler effect
situations. But it will allow a minor party to show real support,
more accurately. Bucklin would do this almost perfectly. IRV also
will, of course.

The Green Partly platform includes many suggestions that are worthy
of consideration. However, it begins the section on electoral reform with this;

>a. Enact proportional representation voting systems for legislative
>seats on municipal, county, state and federal levels. Proportional
>representation systems provide that people are represented in the
>proportion their views are held in society and are based on dividing
>seats proportionally within multi-seat districts, compared to the
>standard U.S. single-seat, winner-take all districts. Forms of
>proportional representation include choice voting (candidate-based),
>party list (party-based) and mixed member voting (combines
>proportional representation with district representation).
>
>b. Enact Instant Run-off Voting (IRV) for chief executive offices
>like mayor, governor and president and other single-seat elections.
>Under IRV, voters can rank candidates in their order of preference
>(1,2,3, etc.) IRV ensures that the eventual winner has majority
>support and allows voters to express their preferences knowing that
>supporting their favorite candidate will not inadvertently help
>their least favored candidate. IRV thus frees voters from being
>forced to choose between the lesser of two evils, and saves money by
>eliminating unnecessary run-off elections.

(a) is, of course, a common idea. Some form of PR is a consensus
position among voting systems experts. We can expect opposition from
those affiliated with the two major parties, from the Lomax Effect.
However, it's possible that a third party could faciitate a shift.
The Green Party is for IRV focusing on the most major elections, but
new voting systems should wisely be tested in elections of less
import. By focusing on large-scale elections, the Party keeps itself
from being responsible for changes it *could* make.

(b) The description of IRV is deceptive, and, Mike, if you don't know
that, I'd wonder about your intellectual capacity.

>And the legitmacy of our elections depends on the legitmacy, and
>therefore the verifiability, of the vote-counting.

Yes. But I seriously doubt that there is a single election where a
Green lost due to vote fraud. I suppose it's possible. These things
do happen, even in small towns.

But a Party that allows itself to be stopped by things like that is
weak. Organizing outside the centers of power is an ancient strategy
that works. Connect people, develop cooperation, grow support, and *win.*

[Michael Ossipoff]

 

 

I'm replying here to a few statements by Joe Lomax, not necessarily all in the same posting:

 

1. Greens' platform and IRV:

 

Joe quotes the GPUS platform::

>
>b. Enact Instant Run-off Voting (IRV) for chief executive offices
>like mayor, governor and president and other single-seat elections.
>Under IRV, voters can rank candidates in their order of preference
>(1,2,3, etc.) IRV ensures that the eventual winner has majority
>support and allows voters to express their preferences knowing that
>supporting their favorite candidate will not inadvertently help
>their least favored candidate. IRV thus frees voters from being
>forced to choose between the lesser of two evils, and saves money by
>eliminating unnecessary run-off elections.

Joe says:

 

[quote]
(b) The description of IRV is deceptive.

[/quote]

 

If Joe is implying that GPUS is attempting deception, then Joe is wrong.

 

That passage about IRV, in the GPUS platform obviously consists of things that Fairvote said. In fact, Fairvote, probably Richie, no doubt met with the Greens, and convinced them of those things. Remember that the Greens are not, nor do they claim to be, specialists on voting systems. They're relaying what they were told by someone who presented himself to them as qualified. Don't blame them if someone gave them false information.

 

I'll re-paste that passage, and comment on it

 

:>b. Enact Instant Run-off Voting (IRV) for chief executive offices

>like mayor, governor and president and other single-seat elections.
>Under IRV, voters can rank candidates in their order of preference
>(1,2,3, etc.) IRV ensures that the eventual winner has majority
>support

 

IRV does ensure automatic majority-rule for a mutual majority (MM). IRV doesn't ensure automatic majority rule for all majorities. Woodall and Benham, as well as possible, offer automatic majority rule to all majorities, howver consitituted, by always electing voted CWs.

 

I wouldn't  have said it as they did. But IRV does offer a  majority rule guarantee.

 

> and allows voters to express their preferences knowing that
>supporting their favorite candidate will not inadvertently help
>their least favored candidate.

 

That sounds like an FBC claim. Of course IRV doesn't meet FBC, and that's why IRV is completely inadequate _for current condtions_. But the GPUS platform isn't offering IRV for curreent conditions, is it. It's offering GPUS for the Green scenario, as part of the new Green government, if Greens are elected to office.

 

But, because FBC isn't needed under the conditions for which the GPUS platform offers IRV, then must we interpret the quoted passage as an FBC guarantee? If you're in a mutual majority, then you need only rank sincerely, and if the rest of that MM rank sincerely, that MM's disfavored candidates cant possibly win. So could that property be what the GPUS had in mind when that said that?

 

 Remember that they aren't voting-system specialists, and therefore can't be held to the strictest technical standards on voting systems. They didn't mean to make a mis-statement. They told it as it was told to them.

 

 

> IRV thus frees voters from being
>forced to choose between the lesser of two evils

 

See above.

 

>, and saves money by
>eliminating unnecessary run-off elections.

 

That's a correct statement.

 

2. Joe, somewhere, said that a mutual majority is a rare occurrence. Oh really? And how does Joe justify that claim?

 

Say you're a progressive (No, not you, Joe--You're a Democrat).  The progressives, being progressives, would lke a progressive to win. There are a number of progressive parties, and a number of progressive candidates. But a progressive wants a progressive to win,and would most likely prefer any one of the progressives, and not only hir favorite, to win. Therefore a progressive would rank all of the progressives over all of the other candidates. That's a mutual majority, by the definition of a mutual majority.

 

3. I believe that somewhere, in the immense garbage-pile that comprises Joe's postings, Joe said that Bucklin doesn't have chicken dilemma. No Bucklin _does_ have chicken dilemma. And ER-Bucklin fails MMC unless the majority-protecting delay is included in the definition, thereby complicating the definition.

 

Well, I've been saying that that delay can confer MMC-compliance to Bucklin, but I don't know if that's true. I'm now not sure that ER-Bucklin can meet MMC, even with that delay. I'm not sure that non-ER Bucklin meets MMC. Maybe all the majority-protecting delay confers on ER-Bucklin is compliance with Jameson's un-named criterion, which is weakeer than MMC.

 

I re-emphasize that Joe's 2-round systems, including Approval-With-Runoff, fails both MMC and FBC.

 

4. Joe says that the middle is between Dem and Repub, and that Dem and Repub adjust their policies toward that middle in order to stay popular with the public, because that "middle" policy position, between Dems and Repubs, is where th public is, and what the public wants.

 

Joe is parroting what his trusted corporate mass-media have been hammering into him all his life. Don't blame him. He can't help it. The cattle believe their media herders.

 

No, the Dems and Repubs choose their policies based on what they're bribed (excuse me--contributed) to do. The media tell us that it's because it's what we want.

 

Correct: The media tell us what we want. More precisely, the media tell you what the other Americans want. Want something completely different and better than what the Republocrats offer and do? Then you're different, say the media. You're the odd-man out, the exception, the one who is beyond the pale, and outside of the national discussion. That's what the media have instilled in Joe--and a lot of other people too.

 

In other words, according to the media, you're alone, and the only one, if you want something better.

 

It must be true, because Joe Lomax's tv says so. :-)

 

Michael Ossipoff

 

 

 

.

 

 

 

 

.

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 09:45 AM 5/31/2013, Michael Ossipoff wrote:
>
>
>I'm replying here to a few statements by Joe Lomax, not necessarily
>all in the same posting:
>
>1. Greens' platform and IRV:
>
>Joe quotes the GPUS platform::
>
> >
> >b. Enact Instant Run-off Voting (IRV) for chief executive offices
> >like mayor, governor and president and other single-seat elections.
> >Under IRV, voters can rank candidates in their order of preference
> >(1,2,3, etc.) IRV ensures that the eventual winner has majority
> >support and allows voters to express their preferences knowing that
> >supporting their favorite candidate will not inadvertently help
> >their least favored candidate. IRV thus frees voters from being
> >forced to choose between the lesser of two evils, and saves money by
> >eliminating unnecessary run-off elections.
>Joe says:
>
>[quote]
>(b) The description of IRV is deceptive.
>[/quote]
>
>If Joe is implying that GPUS is attempting deception, then Joe is wrong.

No, Joe meant what she wrote. The description is deceptive, as she
said. She rather doubts that they would be deliberately so.

Osteopoth commonly interprets neutral comments as being hostile or as attacks.

>That passage about IRV, in the GPUS platform obviously consists of
>things that Fairvote said. In fact, Fairvote, probably Richie, no
>doubt met with the Greens, and convinced them of those things.

Is there something about the Greens that convinces them to accept the
arguments of a political hack before investigating them?

>Remember that the Greens are not, nor do they claim to be,
>specialists on voting systems. They're relaying what they were told
>by someone who presented himself to them as qualified. Don't blame
>them if someone gave them false information.

Sorry. They are responsible for what they write, particularly in
their platform. Ossigoth is a Green. Hasn't he informed them? Did
they listen to him? Why not?

Never mind. I would know why not. That's a rhetorical question. If he
made any attempt to correct this part of the platform, it was filled
with acronyms and explanations that experts have difficulty
following, much less non-experts.

What does it say about a political party that incorproates alleged
fact into its platform that is not only false, but that is broadly
known to be false by experts?

I say what it tells me. It tells me that they are not serious. They
don't intend to win, they only intend to impress a lot of people with
their cool platform. Where there is a scientific controversy, they
will come down solidly and clearly on....

wait a minute, what did people want in that focus group? What do me
and my friends want?

... on the side of Right Thinking Progressives!

> I'll re-paste that passage, and comment on it
>
>:>b. Enact Instant Run-off Voting (IRV) for chief executive offices
> >like mayor, governor and president and other single-seat elections.
> >Under IRV, voters can rank candidates in their order of preference
> >(1,2,3, etc.) IRV ensures that the eventual winner has majority
> >support
>
>IRV does ensure automatic majority-rule for a mutual majority (MM).

That is not what they said, and I'm not sure I'd agree with it even
if they had.

> IRV doesn't ensure automatic majority rule for all majorities.
> Woodall and Benham, as well as possible, offer automatic majority
> rule to all majorities, howver consitituted, by always electing voted CWs.

Ossifloth does what he always does, creates as much confusion as
possible over a simple statement.

>IRV ensures that the eventual winner has majority support

It does no such thing, unless the word "majority" has been so twisted
that with a similar argument we could claim that IRV ensures that the
eventual winner has *unanimous* support.

>I wouldn't have said it as they did. But IRV does offer a majority
>rule guarantee.

If it does that, it lies. In fact, IRV is just a voting system and
cannot lie. But FairVote can. And so can the Green Party. Neither lie
is necessarily a *willful* lie, but once one knows the truth,
continue to promote misleading statements, in my book, has become
lying. And in writing a public document for broad distribution and
study, the obligation to be careful about truth becomes high. Who
fact-checked the GPUSA platform?

It's a *political document,* silly, we don't fact-check such things.
We *vote* on them, as on the value of pi. 22/7 is certainly good
enough for public education....

>
> > and allows voters to express their preferences knowing that
> >supporting their favorite candidate will not inadvertently help
> >their least favored candidate.
>
>That sounds like an FBC claim. Of course IRV doesn't meet FBC, and
>that's why IRV is completely inadequate _for current condtions_. But
>the GPUS platform isn't offering IRV for curreent conditions, is it.
>It's offering GPUS for the Green scenario, as part of the new Green
>government, if Greens are elected to office.

No, this is a platform, not representing a promise for a Green
government, but as a set of goals that the Green Party, if it is not
a collection of hypocrites, will work toward, whether or not they are
elected. If it's purely a promise for the future, it's
pie-in-the-sky. What does the Green Party support NOW?

Without present action and responsibility, there is no way to judge
if the Green Party will actually do anything on the platform.

The statement is utterly confused. It may have been intended as an
expression of Later-no-harm. "... supporting their second preference
will not inadvertently help their second preference defeat their
favored candidate." Or it was just something simpler:

In Plurality, if one supports ones favorite candidate, one can, it
could be claimed, "inadvertently help their least favored candidate."
That's really not true. By supporting their Favorite, Greens in 2000
did not "help" Bush to win, they simply did not help Gore to win. And
I doubt that this was "inadvertent" for any of them. It was known
that the election was close. No, they accepted the argument that
Ossicough has made over and over, that Nader made in that campaign,
that there was no difference between Bore and Gush.

So the problem here is the "inadvertent" part. People know what they
are doing with Plurality. We want to give them better options. IRV
will help them *a little.* But the promises given in the platform are
deceptive.

Now, if Ossiglot know this -- and he does -- what is the Green party
procedure for correcting errors in the platform? Is that procedure
open such that sanity will prevail?

Let me guess.

Nah, I won't guess. It would be far too pessimistic. What *is* the procedure?

And watch what happens if someone tries to use it in this case. I
suspect that certain, ah, *interests* will show up. Special
interests. But wait, isn't the Green Party about democracy and not
allowing special interests to dominate?

If you believe that, well, bridges, Eiffel Tower, yatta yatta.

*Only if they actually set up process to move beyond special interest
influence.* Right now, major special interests aren't spending money
lobbying the Greens, providing them with "information" to "help" them
make solid policy decisions. If they actually get close to power, how
long do you think it would take before lots of "helpful people" are
showing up at Green Party offices?

>But, because FBC isn't needed under the conditions for which the
>GPUS platform offers IRV, then must we interpret the quoted passage
>as an FBC guarantee? If you're in a mutual majority, then you need
>only rank sincerely, and if the rest of that MM rank sincerely, that
>MM's disfavored candidates cant possibly win. So could that property
>be what the GPUS had in mind when that said that?
>
> Remember that they aren't voting-system specialists, and therefore
> can't be held to the strictest technical standards on voting
> systems. They didn't mean to make a mis-statement. They told it as
> it was told to them.

Ostifoff is so obsessed by voting systems criteria that he missed the
obvious explanation.

> > IRV thus frees voters from being
> >forced to choose between the lesser of two evils
>
>See above.

Right. It *seems* to do that, Ossiflim-flam knows that it can require
that choice, as a Republican voting first preference for a Democrat
in Burlington to avoid the election of the Progressive.

>
> >, and saves money by
> >eliminating unnecessary run-off elections.
>
>That's a correct statement.

Maybe. But it does not necessarily save money. Implementing IRV is
enormously expensive, and cavassing with it is an ongoing expense.
Runoff-elections have a cost, yes, but depending on the system, that
cost may be small. The present partisan system of holding partisan
primaries and a general election is a runoff system, of a kind. It's
two-round, basically, with a lot of separate primaries. Burlingon
spent the money to implement IRV. Did they save money? Compared to what?

In San Francisco, almost every IRV election would have turned out the
same with Plurality. So IRV was *unnecessary runoff elections.*
Except that real runoff elections switch the winner a third of the
time. Those runoffs were *not* "unnecessary." They were necessary to
find a real majority. Used to be that those runoffs allowed
write-ins, so they were not coerced majorities. The voters wanted to
find a majority, and they were led to believe by the voter
information pamphlet in San Francisco that IRV "would still require
the winner to gain a majority of the votes." Who wrote that ballot
information text? Let me guess....

Yes, FairVote has been very effective. Just not very Fair.

San Francisco spent millions to set up IRV, and what did they get for
it? In almost every election, the same result as if they had simply
dumped the majority requirement, since they *did* dump the majority
requirement, the IRV question specifically took it out of the
election code. But most people don't read the actual code changes,
they trust those voter information pamphlets. Aren't they prepared by
neutral people?

(I read the arguments presented. The opponents of IRV were woefully
uninformed themselves. They did not identify the real problems of IRV
and the basic deception involved in the "neutral" presentation. They
were all about ... I don't even remember, it was so irrelevant.

http://sfpl4.sfpl.org/pdf/main/gic/elections/March5_2002.pdf

P. 39 of the PDF, the "neutral" information:

>A winner would still have to receive more than 50% of the vote.

Read the pamphlet and arguments and weep.

>2. Joe, somewhere, said that a mutual majority is a rare occurrence.
>Oh really? And how does Joe justify that claim?

It's been tested in a few Approval elections. The tendency is toward
majority failure, not toward multiple majorities. It can happen, I
have no doubt about that, but probably not in contested major elections.

>Say you're a progressive (No, not you, Joe--You're a Democrat).

Smile when you say that, Osteofibrosis. It's called a "Progressive
Democrat" in more polite company. With a Libertarian edge.

> The progressives, being progressives, would lke a progressive to
> win. There are a number of progressive parties, and a number of
> progressive candidates. But a progressive wants a progressive to
> win,and would most likely prefer any one of the progressives, and
> not only hir favorite, to win. Therefore a progressive would rank
> all of the progressives over all of the other candidates. That's a
> mutual majority, by the definition of a mutual majority.

Osteohaha wants to use Progressives as an example of actual mutual
majorities. In the Occupy movement polls, reported in the recent CES
interview, approval polls in a very progressive district showed Obama
far ahead of Stein, who did not make it to majority approval *in a poll*.

It's only a "mutual majority" if more than one candidate has majority
preference. In probably the most likely major area in the U.S. to
have that, only one candidate had a majority in a *poll*. Conducted
by a group that would probably be considered progressive.

Of course, sane people in the U.S. will generally consider that some
Democrats are progressives. That would make Osteofluff's argument
more sound, but, of course, he'd have to, ah, retreat on a major claim.

>
>3. I believe that somewhere, in the immense garbage-pile that
>comprises Joe's postings, Joe said that Bucklin doesn't have chicken
>dilemma. No Bucklin _does_ have chicken dilemma. And ER-Bucklin
>fails MMC unless the majority-protecting delay is included in the
>definition, thereby complicating the definition.

"Chicken dilemma" is not a well-defined criterion. It's a kind of
choice that voters face in some elections, and voters facing this
choice and making optimal decisions probably enhances the performance
of the system. But Ossifoffof doesn't accept "measures of
performance" he only likes "criteria" which don't measure what
actually matters, voter satisfaction with results. His approach is
thoroughly corrupt, and someone who points it out is therefore
creating an "immense garbage-pile."

I consider the source when reviewing complaints like that.

>Well, I've been saying that that delay can confer MMC-compliance to
>Bucklin, but I don't know if that's true. I'm now not sure that
>ER-Bucklin can meet MMC, even with that delay. I'm not sure that
>non-ER Bucklin meets MMC. Maybe all the majority-protecting delay
>confers on ER-Bucklin is compliance with Jameson's un-named
>criterion, which is weakeer than MMC.

I.e., "I'm making this up as I go along." What is "delay"? I asked
that. I haven't seen any examples of MMC failure, documented so that
they can be reviewed. I'd have to make them up.

> I re-emphasize that Joe's 2-round systems, including
> Approval-With-Runoff, fails both MMC and FBC.

It is possible to imagine a scenario where some voters, stupidly,
will imagine that voting insincerely, will help them improve the
outcome. Those voters will attempt to prevent the majority from
making a choice. They will almost certainly fail. FBC is a criterion
invented by Osteoflourosis. Like many criteria, it sounds good until
the actual conditions of operation are considered. FBC failure with
some methods is serious, making a vote for the sincere first
preference highly inadvisable. But with Approval with Runoff,
particularly in nonpartisan elections, the circumstance are entirely
against the kinds of voting patterns that would have to occur for the
FBC-violating strategy to make any sense at all.

In order to assess the cogency of a strategy, one would need to know
the underlying utilities of the electorate, not just what some radio
commentator alleges. Ossifluff's critiques are based on crude
assumptions about election behavior, not on anything objective. He
just asserts his opinion with no evidence, as if he were the World's
Foremost Expert on Voting Systems, whose word is to be taken without question.

>4. Joe says that the middle is between Dem and Repub,

It appears so. That's pretty much how a two-party system functions.
When one party moves too far outboard, it loses support to the other.

> and that Dem and Repub adjust their policies toward that middle in
> order to stay popular with the public, because that "middle" policy
> position, between Dems and Repubs, is where th public is, and what
> the public wants.

Not necessarily. The public is more complex than that. But *more or
less*, less. Remember, this is about *perception.* "Reality" is only
relevant as it happens to sometimes impinge on the fantasies we carry
around. We vote based on *perceptions.* We don't have a Journal of
Absolute Reality to consult. Or do we?

>Joe is parroting what his trusted corporate mass-media have been
>hammering into him all his life. Don't blame him. He can't help it.
>The cattle believe their media herders.

He's lying, that is, he's reponsible for what he says. I do consider
him sufficiently confused that I doubt he's deliberately lying. He
has to know the truth to do that. Joe doesn't believe what she reads
in the media, she knows too much to do that. However, what she said
was about *perceptions*. And there is no doubt about that.

Osshifer imagines that how the world appears to him is the Truth, and
everything else is media deception. But he apparently beleives what
he reads in his Bible, the Green Party Platform. Oh, wait, they were
misinformed, they followed the FairVote bleep.

Where does Osshifffu get his information? From internet blogs?

>No, the Dems and Repubs choose their policies based on what they're
>bribed (excuse me--contributed) to do. The media tell us that it's
>because it's what we want.

So who bribes the voters and how? There are quite a few voters, you
know. And where are my checks?

Ah. I get a check from the government for a nice sum every month. My
father was a confirmed Republican, but he was also a CPA and he
supported that program. Social Security. He supported it, because it
was a good deal for employees. He was an employee of a public power
system, and they could have opted out. He argued that it was too good
a deal not to take it. Sometimes I wonder about that... and the
system has problems. But I have little doubt about which party is
less likely to stop my check. Is that a difference?

Gee, if that's not a difference, I'm not sure what is.

Which party is more likely to take measures to slow or reverse global
warming? Yes, there are complications. Polluters will certainly try
to influence Democrats as well as Republicans, and they will go after
Greens if Greens make it worthwhile by getting enough power to be
attractive. And some of those arguments will be quite fair-sounding,
more so that FairVote arguments. Osteofluff seems to imagine Greens
will be immune to arguments put together with greater resources than
available to FairVote. Why?

Because Greens R Us, that's why. We are the Good People, unlike You,
Stupid Dupe of the Mass Media.

>Correct: The media tell us what we want.

Of course they do. Or, more accurately, they tell us what they think
we want. Otherwise we stop paying attention to them, and all that fat
advertising revenue disappears. Yes, public relations agents attempt
to manipulate public opinion, and they are experts at it. And if they
go too far, they fail badly. And there goes the clients.

>More precisely, the media tell you what the other Americans want.

Which is, of course, circular. It's called a cascade, and I write
about cascades all the time.

>Want something completely different and better than what the
>Republocrats offer and do? Then you're different, say the media.

Is there a problem with being different? Actually, I've never seen
the media assert this. They want everyone as a customer, i.e., as a reader.

> You're the odd-man out, the exception, the one who is beyond the
> pale, and outside of the national discussion. That's what the media
> have instilled in Joe--and a lot of other people too.

Nope. They found the circumstances in place, they are a product of
socialization.

>In other words, according to the media, you're alone, and the only
>one, if you want something better.
>
>It must be true, because Joe Lomax's tv says so. :-)

Liar, liar, pants on fire!

If you want something better, if you even realize that something
better is possible, and start to do soemthing about it, you become
what is called in my training "worth shooting."

Most of us, the point is made, aren't worth shooting.

At last not yet. A transition can occur where everone tranforms at
once, and targets become so many that the shooters give up.
Unfortunately, if the public isn't ready for this, the results can be
worse than what happened before they walked out into the street.

We have habits regarding how to organize and make collective
decisions that will recreate the conditions we disliked, with new
faces. Hence my emphasis is on preparing for power by using advanced
decision-making systems in NGOs. That requires integrating all we
know about such process, not just a narrow consideration of "voting systems."

>Michael Ossipoff

That's his name. "I'm right" is his game.

Isn't it a shame?

[Jameson Quinn]

The name game was a bit humorous the first few times. But seriously; if someone starts deliberately misusing your name as a provocation, while peppering their interminable posts with gross logical mistakes and highly implausible fantasies, the right answer is "don't feed the troll". The sad thing about a troll is that it actually loves the taste of its own medicine, so giving it some never works.

In other words: Abd, I suggest you do our inboxes all a favor, and stop responding.

Jameson

[Dale Sheldon-Hess]

I would like to think that literal name-calling is beneath the decorum
of the list. Even if someone else started it.

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

Okay. Some valuable points have been made, but, folks, it's your list
(actually, it's *our* list, but I'm practically nothing, seriously. I
am so nothing I amaze myself every day.

DNFTT. I've certainly heard that before a few times.... Perhapts it's time....

BUT ... <giggle> .... nah, never mind. I am having so much fun
probably the police should be called. Isn't it illegal?

[Michael Ossipoff]

 

I'm commenting, first, on Jameson's posting, not because it's better, but merely because it's briefer:

On Friday, May 31, 2013 4:00:57 PM UTC-4, Jameson Quinn wrote:

The name game was a bit humorous the first few times. But seriously; if someone starts deliberately misusing your name as a provocation

 

 

I'm not mis-using Mr. Lomax's name. I don't know his first name, and so I'm taking a  guess about it. And no, I'm not doing so as  provocation. If Mr. Lomax wants to disclose his initially-given first name, then I'd be glad to use it, instead of guessing aboutit.

 

 

, while peppering their interminable posts with gross logical mistakes 

 

...mistake that Jamesn, regrettably, forgot to specify :-)

 

 

 

 

  |  and highly implausible fantasies

 

I never claimed that it's certain that the Green scenario will come to pass. In fact I said that it's unlikely that the conditions for it will ever obtain (people reading some platforms, and then voting in their own perceived best interest).

 

But then the enactment of voting system refrom without first electing a better pary,via plurality, is an even less implausible fantasy.

 

 

 

.

In other words: Abd, I suggest you do our inboxes all a favor, and stop responding.

 

 

 

Why don't you set an example, Jameson :-)

 

 

 

[Michael Ossipoff]

Typo:

 

I said:

 

"But then the enactment of voting system refrom without first electing a better pary,via plurality, is an even less implausible fantasy"

 

I meant:

 

"...a more implausible fantasy."

 

Michael Ossipoff

[Bruce Gilson]

On Sat, Jun 1, 2013 at 4:43 PM, Michael Ossipoff <email9...@gmail.com> wrote:

 

I'm commenting, first, on Jameson's posting, not because it's better, but merely because it's briefer:

On Friday, May 31, 2013 4:00:57 PM UTC-4, Jameson Quinn wrote:

The name game was a bit humorous the first few times. But seriously; if someone starts deliberately misusing your name as a provocation

 

 

I'm not mis-using Mr. Lomax's name. I don't know his first name, and so I'm taking a  guess about it. And no, I'm not doing so as  provocation. If Mr. Lomax wants to disclose his initially-given first name, then I'd be glad to use it, instead of guessing about

it.

 

The name he chooses to use as a first name is "Abd." It hardly matters what the name is on his birth certificate. Does anyone refer to Marilyn Monroe as "Norma Jean Mortenson" (or "Norma Jean Baker": there is some question as to which is correct)? The fact is that, whatever the name is on their actual birth certificate, there are a lot of people who use different names for particular reasons. In the case of Abd, a religious conversion, I assume. In the caae of my father, a desire to use a more "American" sounding name. (Although in this case, the name was changed legally. But in theory it is not necessary; you can use any name you choose, as long as no fraud is intended.)

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 03:43 PM 6/1/2013, you wrote:
>
>I'm commenting, first, on Jameson's posting, not because it's
>better, but merely because it's briefer:
>
>On Friday, May 31, 2013 4:00:57 PM UTC-4, Jameson Quinn wrote:
>The name game was a bit humorous the first few times. But seriously;
>if someone starts deliberately misusing your name as a provocation
>
>I'm not mis-using Mr. Lomax's name. I don't know his first name, and
>so I'm taking a guess about it.

Try Abd or Abd ul-Rahman. Duh!

> And no, I'm not doing so as provocation. If Mr. Lomax wants to
> disclose his initially-given first name, then I'd be glad to use
> it, instead of guessing aboutit.

You want the name on my birth certificate? Why? Nobody knows me by
that name that actually knows me and talks with me. It's still on my
driver's license because I've never bothered to change it legally. I
write in many fields using Abd ul-Rahman, and, recently, in training,
my name tag just read Abd. And that's what people call me. (It's
pronounced Abid.) I have another name that was used for many years,
it's been almost entirely dropped. I decided at one point to make a
point of using my Muslim name instead of hiding that I'm a Muslim,
which I could easily do. So I started using it in business, where I
was very well-known.

Here is a post from 2000:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/protel-users-resale/message/5

If you used my birth name, I wouldn't recognize it. Really. People
sometimes get my name from some document and call it out, and I don't
get that they are calling me. Until I figure it out.

Lomax is my real surname, on my birth certificate. I also recognize
that name. Mr. Lomax is fine.