Loomio
Sun 12 Mar 2017 4:39AM

Glossary for Voting Enthusiasts

SW Sara Wolf Public Seen by 29

I made you all a glossary! Please use this thread to look up terms, or to cut and paste and share while we discuss. If you have edits, suggestions or additions please comment below and I will update this post. If you want to go through point by point or if you have multiple or detailed edits please use the google doc version shared at the bottom. You can highlight a section of text and comment about it in the sidebar.

GLOSSARY FOR VOTING ENTHUSIASTS

Approval Voting: A voting system where voters check a box for as many candidates as you approve. The candidate with the most approval votes wins.

Arrow’s theorem: Arrow’s theorem states that it’s impossible for any voting system to pass all desirable criteria because some criteria are mutually exclusive.

Bayesian Regret (BR): A system used to measure the accuracy (utility) of various voting systems.
Bayesian Regret measures the amount of “avoidable human unhappiness" at the end of an election. This is the inverse of Voter Satisfaction Efficiency. Bayesian Regret is measured quantitatively by computer simulations and it can be used to measure election accuracy regardless of voters strategies or honesty. Bayesian Regret and Voter Satisfaction Efficiency are considered by many elections experts to be the gold standard for measuring accuracy (utility) of various voting systems, though some people prefer to use the Condorcet Winner as a measure of accuracy. Condorcet and BE/VSE usually agree on the best winner for a given election but in some close elections Condorcet favors the majority's 1st choice and BE/VSE prefers the candidate that will make the most people as happy as possible, i.e. the best compromise.

Borda Count: a voting system in which voters rank options or candidates in order of preference. These rankings are then counted as scores. The scores are totaled and the candidate with the lowest score wins. Variations which use other formula to turn rankings into scores exist as well. Borda count is often described as a consensus-based voting system rather than a majoritarian one.

Bullet Voting: a voting strategy that can be used in more expressive voting systems where you give only one candidate a maximum and the rest a minimum vote. This is a common strategy for less informed or more hurried voters. Ranking only your first choice and leaving others blank. Bullet Voting when you honestly either love, or hate, or have no opinion on the candidates is an honest strategy that is not harmful. Bullet Voting when you have a nuanced opinion or like multiple candidates is a harmful strategy that can lead to less accurate results. An election where everyone Bullet Votes would be Plurality.

Compromise Acceptance Criteria: a voting system criteria that states that a voting system should pick the candidate that will make the most voters as happy as possible. Compromise Acceptance Criteria means that a voting system should take into account a voters second choice and other preferences even if doing so means that their favorite is less likely to win.

Compromise Acceptance Criteria is the opposite of Later-No-Harm Criteria, (aka Compromise Refusal Criteria.) The two criteria are both desirable but are mutually exclusive. It's debatable which is preferable and it's fine to agree to disagree on this point. This paradoxical criteria is the subject of much debate and the conclusion is a matter of personal preference.

The fundamental question is this:
"Do you prefer to work together to find what's best overall, or do you prefer to stick with what is best for you?"

Condorcet Criteria: A criteria which states that the Condorcet Winner should always win.

Condorcet Methods: Condorcet Methods are any voting system where the Condorcet Winner always wins. More common examples are Ranked Pairs and Schultz Method but there are many more that have different methods for resolving ties.

Condorcet Winner: The Condorcet Winner is the candidate that would beat any other candidate in a head-to-head election. Majority rules. The Condorcet Winner is often used to show when a spoiler effect occurred and elected a candidate that was not preferred by the majority. Some voting systems are Condorcet Methods, meaning that the Condorcet Winner always wins. It is important to note that in some elections a majority winner doesn't exist because there may be a 3 way tie, (like in rock, paper, scissors) there may be no candidate that the majority supports, or there may be multiple candidates with support from different majorities (picture a venn diagram).

Though some people prefer to use the Condorcet Winner as a measure of accuracy, many elections experts prefer Bayesian Regret and Voter Satisfaction Efficiency. Condorcet and BE/VSE usually agree on the best winner for a given election but in some close elections Condorcet favors the majority's 1st choice and BE/VSE prefers the candidate that will make the most people as happy as possible, i.e. the best compromise.

A Condorcet Winner is only as accurate as the information on voters ballots so it cannot take into account dishonest or strategic voting. A Condorcet Winner derived from a more expressive and more honest ballots will give a more accurate result. A score ballot derived Condorcet Winner would be quite accurate.

Favorite Betrayal: is a dishonest strategy where in order to prevent a spoiler effect a savvy voter realizes that they are better off ranking their favorite candidate as a number 2 or lower in IRV or just not voting for them at all in Plurality. In score voting Favorite Betrayal would be any time you give your favorite a score that is less than you gave to others. This is the most harmful strategy in voting.

Favorite Betrayal Criteria: is a criteria used to judge voting systems. In order to pass, a voting system must never create a situation where this is a good strategy for a voter, or where it helps them get a better outcome overall.
-Plurality strongly incentivizes Favorite Betrayal for all voters who's favorite isn't polling in the top 2.

-IRV incentivizes Favorite Betrayal for voters who's favorite is pretty strong but is likely to be eliminated in a later round, i.e. those who's favorite will probably come in 2nd or 3rd place but not 1st.
-SRV only incentivizes Favorite Betrayal in extremely rare scenarios where a voter might want to do favorite betrayal if they were all knowing, but in practice there is no way to know when it would help them. The odds are that this harmful strategy would backfire.

-Score Voting Passes Honest Favorite Criteria criteria but is more vulnerable to other strategies.

Because the term Favorite Betrayal Criteria incorrectly makes it sound like we want people to betray their favorite some people prefer the term “Honest Favorite Criteria”. When talking with a technical audience Favorite Betrayal may be the most well understood term, but for a general audience we want terms to be as self explanatory as possible in order to avoid confusion. All criteria would ideally be positive and describe the desired effect.

Favorite Betrayal Effect: is an effect in elections where people practice the Favorite Betrayal Strategy. This can lead to the actually favorite of the majority loosing and the people having no idea that the true favorite even had the needed level of support. (Favorite Betrayal caused Spoiler Effect). Favorite Betrayal Effect can also cause viable parties to seem unviable and other negative consequences, even when the candidates in question didn't have the support required to actually win.

Favorite Betrayal caused Spoiler Effect: One kind of spoiler effect caused when people practice Favorite Betrayal Strategy and the candidate with the most support, (as measured by Condorcet or Voter Satisfaction Efficiency) loses the election.

Favorite Betrayal Criteria: is a criteria used to judge voting systems. In order to pass, a voting system must never create a situation where this is a good strategy for a voter, or where it helps them get a better outcome overall.

First-Past-The-Post: The current system in the USA for voting. Otherwise know as Plurality Voting. Widely believed to be the least accurate voting system, but it is one of the oldest and most simple.

Honest Favorite Criteria: is the same as Favorite Betrayal Criteria. This criteria was renamed because Favorite Betrayal Criteria incorrectly makes it sound like we want people to betray their favorite. When talking with a technical audience Favorite Betrayal may be the most well understood term, but for a general audience we want terms to be as self explanatory as possible in order to avoid confusion. All criteria names would ideally be positive and describe the desired effect.

Instant Runoff Voting (IRV): the most commonly used type of Ranked Choice Voting. A voting system in which voters rank candidates are ranked on the ballot in order of 1st, 2nd, 3rd and sometimes 4th or more choices. It's fine to leave candidates blank. If a candidate has a majority of 1st choice votes, that candidate wins. Otherwise, the candidate with the fewest 1st choice votes is eliminated. If your 1st choice is eliminated, your vote goes to your next choice (if any or if they haven't already been eliminated in an earlier round) This process repeats until one candidate has a majority.

Later-No-Harm Criteria: a voting system criteria that states that you can never hurt your favorite by ranking or rating your following choices honestly. This is obviously desirable but unfortunately systems that pass this criteria are unable to help find a compromise candidate that would be preferred by the majority if that candidate isn't the majority's first choice. This paradoxical criteria is the subject of much debate and the conclusion is a matter of personal preference.

Later-No-Harm can also be called Compromise Refusal. The opposite is Compromise Acceptance Criteria. It's debatable which is preferable and it's fine to agree to disagree on this point.

The fundamental question is this:
"Do you prefer to work together to find what's best overall, or do you prefer to stick with what is best for you?"

Majority Criteria: a controversial criteria that states that a slim majority that agrees on it's first choice should be able to overpower another larger majority that may not agree on their first choice but have come to a compromise. This is the inverse of Tyranny-Of-The-Majority Criteria. Majority Criteria and Tyranny-Of-The-Majority Criteria are mutually exclusive.

Nader Effect: an effect where a majority coalition can be defeated by a much smaller minority because the coalition's votes are split between two similar candidates, usually from the same side of the political spectrum or from the same party. This is also known as vote splitting. In 2000, Green Candidate Ralph Nader ran in the general election alongside Al Gore. George Bush Sr. was elected and Nader was blamed for being a spoiler though this is actually debatable for a few reasons. Regardless, the experience had a lasting effect on voters who still remain very reluctant to vote 3rd party for fear of the vote being split.

Plurality Voting: The current system in the USA for voting. Otherwise know as First-Past-The-Post. Widely believed to be the least accurate voting system, but it is one of the oldest and most simple.

Proportional Representation: The idea that representation in government should be in proportion to the demographics of the population. This term usually relates to the makeup of political bodies and councils. Proportional Representation is also a family of voting systems designed to elect multiple winners that represent both majority and minority interests. Versions include STV, RRV, Party List Systems and MMP among others.

Range Voting: a voting system for single-seat elections, in which voters give each candidate a score, the scores are added (or averaged), and the candidate with the highest total is elected. Otherwise known as Score Voting

Ranked Choice Voting (RCV): a family of voting systems that use rank ordering of candidates to determine a winner. Pure Ranked Choice Voting Systems include Instant Runoff Voting, Ranked Pairs and other systems that use a ranked ballot and also use the ranked order to determine the winner with varying algorithms. Hybrid RCV systems include Score Runoff Voting, which uses a score ballot but then uses the derived rankings from the ballot to determine the winner of the runoff, and systems like Borda Count or 3-2-1 Voting that use a ranked ballot but determine the winner by other means than ranking.

Some people, especially in the USA use RCV to mean Instant Runoff Voting (IRV), the most commonly used type of RCV.

Ranked Pairs: A Condorcet Voting System which starts with the strongest defeats and uses as much information as it can without creating ambiguity.

Reweighted Range Voting (RRV): a proportional representation voting system for electing multiple candidates at once. RRV is based on Score Voting and uses a series of algorithms to reweight votes and allow voters to show support for minority candidates. The goal of RRV is to have the winners match the voter demographics.

Schulze method: A Condorcet Voting System which repeatedly removes the weakest defeat until ambiguity is removed.

Score Runoff Voting (SRV): A new voting system which is topping the charts for accuracy as measured by Voter Satisfaction Efficiency. SRV is a hybrid of Score and Instant Runoff Voting. Voters give a score to each candidate on a scale from 0-5 (other scales can be used as well) The two highest scoring candidates advance to an instant runoff. In the runoff, your full vote goes to the one you scored higher.

Score Runoff Voting- Proportional Representation (SRV-PR): a proportional representation voting system for electing multiple candidates at once. SRV-PR is based on Reweighted Range Voting and Score Runoff Voting. SRV-PR uses a series of algorithms to reweight votes and allow voters to show support for minority candidates. Each candidate is selected in two rounds like in SRV. The goal of SRV-PR is to have the winners match the voter demographics.

Score voting: a voting method for single-seat elections, in which voters give each candidate a score, the scores are added (or averaged), and the candidate with the highest total is elected. Otherwise known as Range Voting

Single Transferable Vote (STV): a proportional representation voting system used in Australia for electing multiple candidates at once. STV is based on Instant Runoff Voting but uses a complex series of algorithms to reweight votes and allow voters to show support for minority candidates. The goal of STV is to have the winners match the voter demographics.

Spoiler Effect: an effect where a majority coalition can be defeated by a much smaller minority because the coalition's votes are split between two similar candidates, usually from the same side of the political spectrum or from the same party. This is well known as the "Nader Effect" from when Green Candidate Ralph Nader ran in the general election alongside Al Gore. George Bush Sr. was elected and Nader was blamed for being a spoiler though this is actually debatable for a few reasons in Nader's case. Regardless, the experience had a lasting effect on voters who still remain very reluctant to vote 3rd party for fear of the vote being split.

Strategic Voting: there are a number of strategies that can be used by voters to try and get the best results possible. There are 2 fundamental types of strategic voting, honest strategy and dishonest strategy. Note that in different voting systems honest and dishonest voting might be either helpful or harmful to the accuracy of the final results or for the individual voter. For example Plurality Voting strongly incentivizes dishonest strategy because it's best possible results are obtained when most voters are dishonest and strategic. A given strategy is deemed to be incentivized if the strategy will help the individual voter more often than it will backfire and harm them. It is impossible to eliminate strategic voting but some voting systems do a good job of making sure that strategic voting isn't incentivized, isn't beneficial, or that it isn't clear how or when to use a given strategy.

Dishonest strategy includes tactics like Favorite Betrayal, ranking or rating candidates in a different order than you actually prefer them, (Up Ranking or Down Ranking Strategy) Bullet Voting when you have a nuanced opinion, as well as multi voter strategic schemes like vote trading.

Honest strategies include voting your conscience as well as other strategies that would be considered honest voting in less expressive systems but require more thought in expressive voting systems. Examples of honest voting strategies include Bullet Voting when you honestly love or hate multiple candidates, and giving candidates higher or lower scores on a score ballot as long as you rank them in honest order (Up Scoring or Down Scoring.)

Supporting the Weak Opponent Strategy: A strategy where you help out some weak candidate you don't like in order to disadvantage a candidate you think can beat your favorite. Some voting systems can incentivize voters to support a weak opponent, in order that their preferred candidate win the general election. In an open partisan primary election, for example, this is a viable strategy. If your party candidate is a shoe-in to the general election, you may cast a vote for the weaker opponent candidate so that your candidate has an easier time winning.

Straw Man Argument: a deceptive debate tactic for when you can't effectively refute your opponents point so you instead refute a different point that nobody was making. This can make it look as though you won, when in fact you are off on a tangent.

Tactical Maximization is a strategy where you increase support for candidates other than your favorite because you think your favorite is weak or you want to hedge your bet. This strategy is the inverse of Tactical Minimization. In many elections both strategies could be used by different voters so the effects could cancel each other out. Vulnerability to Tactical Maximization and Tactical Minimization are the leading arguments against Score Voting though at worst this strategy would make Score Voting as or more accurate than Instant Runoff Voting or Approval Voting. This is otherwise known as Up Voting Strategy. Bullet voting is the extreme of this strategy.

Tactical Minimization is where you decrease your support for candidates other than your favorite. This strategy is the inverse of Tactical Maximization. In many elections both strategies could be used by different voters so the effects could cancel each other out. Vulnerability to Tactical Maximization and Tactical Minimization are the leading arguments against Score Voting though at worst this strategy would make Score Voting as or more accurate than Instant Runoff Voting or Approval Voting. This is otherwise known as Down Voting Strategy. Bullet voting is the extreme of this strategy.

Tyranny-Of-The-Majority Criteria: a controversial criteria that states that a slim majority that agrees on it's first choice should not be able to overpower another larger majority that may not agree on their first choice but have come to a compromise. This is the inverse of Majority Criteria and the two are mutually exclusive.

Tyranny-Of-The-Majority Criteria is the same as Compromise Acceptance Criteria. Ideally all criteria should positive and describe the desired effect to help so we prefer the term Compromise Acceptance Criteria when advocating this concept. Tyranny-Of-The-Majority Criteria is more well know in academic contexts and is effective when used to compare it with its inverse Majority Criteria.

Up Ranking or Down Ranking Strategy: this is a strategy that can be used in ranked voting systems where you give a candidate who is not your favorite or your least favorite a higher or lower ranking in order to help or hurt them based on what you think other voters are going to do. This is a dishonest and destructive strategy to the whole, even if it helps the individual voter.

Up Scoring or Down Scoring Strategy: this is a strategy that can be used in score voting systems where you give a candidate who is not your favorite or your least favorite a higher or lower score in order to help or hurt them based on what you think other voters are going to do. If your candidates can still be ranked in honest order of preference from looking at your ballot this is not a dishonest strategy and it's not harmful but if you actually change the derived rank order this can be a dishonest or destructive strategy to the whole, even if it helps the individual voter.

Up Voting or Down Voting Strategy: this is a strategy that can be used in score or rank voting systems where you give a candidate who is not your favorite or your least favorite a higher or lower vote in order to help or hurt them based on what you think other voters are going to do. Otherwise known as Tactical Minimization or Maximization. If your candidates can still be ranked in honest order of preference from looking at your ballot this is not a dishonest strategy and it's not harmful but if you actually change the derived rank order this can be a dishonest or destructive strategy to the whole, even if it helps the individual voter.

Voter Satisfaction Efficiency (VSE): VSE is a system used to measure the accuracy (utility) of various voting systems. It allows for a detailed look at how different systems perform in mathematical simulations. It can also measure how well each system functions using honest voting as opposed to various strategies. VSE can be used to predict how effective a given strategy is in each voting system and how often that strategy will backfire for the given voter.

In the field of voting theory, there are many desirable criteria a given voting method may or may not pass but it’s been shown that it’s impossible for a method to pass all desirable criteria (Arrow’s theorem), so tradeoffs are necessary. VSE measures how well a method makes those tradeoffs by using outcomes. Basically, instead of asking “can a certain kind of problem ever happen?”, VSE is asking “how rarely do problems of all kinds happen?”.

VSE is expressed as a percentage. A voting method which could read voters minds and always pick the candidate that would lead to the highest average happiness would have a VSE of 100%. A method which picked a candidate completely at random would have a VSE of 0%.

Voter Satisfaction Efficiency is the inverse of Bayesian Regret. VSE is explained here in depth: http://electology.github.io/vse-sim/VSE/

Vote Splitting: an effect where a majority coalition can be defeated by a much smaller minority because the coalition's votes are split between two similar candidates, usually from the same side of the political spectrum or from the same party. This is well known as the "Nader Effect" from when Green Candidate Ralph Nader ran in the general election alongside Al Gore. George Bush Sr. was elected and Nader was blamed for being a spoiler though this is actually debatable for a few reasons in Nader's case. Regardless, the experience had a lasting effect on voters who still remain very reluctant to vote 3rd party for fear of the vote being split.

3-2-1 Voting (321V): A new voting system that seems to be very accurate while still being quite simple. This system was invented by Jameson Quinn of electology.org. Voters rate each candidate using one of three ratings: Good, OK, or Bad. There are three rounds where candidates are pared down to the top 3, the top 2, and then the winner. The 3 semifinalists are the candidates with the most “good” ratings. (No two may be from the same party, and all must have at least 15% “good”.) The 2 finalists are the semifinalists with the fewest “bad” ratings. The winner is the finalist rated higher on more ballots. If this system had a name that could be googled we’d be more excited about it.

LINK WHERE YOU ARE INVITED TO COMMENT ABOUT EDITS AND ADDITIONS:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WyX_CT331Ho2WTwTWoFrdP1fZhP7qeESrBXWtj756p0/edit?usp=sharing

AW

Aaron Wolf Sun 12 Mar 2017 5:03AM

Impressive and dedicated work putting this together. Still, it's clearly a draft in progress with various biases and selectiveness. I'd encourage participation at Wikipedia on these things perhaps alongside a select and separate glossary you use.

I don't have time to get into the various issues here, but it's not like I think the whole thing is misguided, it just is clearly a draft that needs refining. I also think this probably belongs in the Wonk Talk subgroup and not in the general one.

MF

Mark Frohnmayer Sun 12 Mar 2017 6:00AM

Holy vaca, nice work! We should edit/merge with https://www.loomio.org/d/yBLskMKv/glossary

AW

Aaron Wolf Sun 12 Mar 2017 7:23AM

I should add that I think "bullet voting" means voting a top-score for only one candidate and there's no particular term for just using highest and lowest scores but for multiple candidates on each side (i.e. degrading to approval). The assertion of "bullet voting" is used for approval voting itself to say people will approve only one candidate even though they could approve more.

SW

Sara Wolf Sun 12 Mar 2017 8:22AM

Edited Bullet Voting to mean only giving a max to one. Wow, if it just means one favorite then this strategy is really easy to argue against for score or SRV!! I feel like I've seen Bullet Voting used to describe Approval Style Tactical Minimization and Maximization in the past but maybe we have to coin that term ourselves? Approval Bullet Voting? Tactical Approval Strategy? @emilydempsey

As to the Wiki suggestion, I'm stoked to do a peer reviewed glossary but don't want others free to edit without consultation or stated reason. The last thing I need in my life is a wiki battle like has been already waged over the term ranked choice voting and others! I hope to hold everything I write to a higher standard than Wiki and that's why I'm working on drafting educational materials and posting them here for feedback! Thanks guys and hope you find this and my other stuff helpful!

The pen is mightier than the sword!
"language is defined by usage, usage isn't defined by definitions."

SW

Sara Wolf Sun 12 Mar 2017 7:04PM

A really good detailed explanation of the tyranny-of-the-majority concern and how it relates to SRV from Aaron that I'd posted in the other glossary. If anyone writes a great convincing or detailed pitch for one criteria or another we might want to start compiling that sort of thing in their own section. I'm thinking FAQ will be my next project!

"51% of voters favor candidate A. 49% hate candidate A. Say that 100% of voters love candidates B and C with weak preference between them. Say there's some others, D, E, F so that the range isn't where B or C are the worst for anyone.

Well, that means B and C will have 100% of voters giving them 9, 8, or 7. Clearly, that's higher score than 51% of voters giving a 9. So, B and C will go to the runoff. 100% of voters will be satisfied (feel supportive of the winner), but 51% majority could be disappointed in not getting their favorite.

Now, if it's not 51% but 65% or 70%, then that could change things because not only would the scores get closer, but the majority status might be more obvious so bullet-voting by the majority becomes a safer strategy and they decide to just assert their tyranny-of-the-majority by giving everyone but A a 0 (or some of them do that).

... the only result Score Runoff gives in this sort of scenario is either a true majority winner from all candidates or the majority-favorite (among those who differentiate a preference in the runoff) of the top overall scoring candidates. This isn't tragic ever.

The Condorcet winner is not guaranteed in Score Runoff. A tyranny-of-the-majority winner is always the Condorcet winner. Any system that allows consensus candidates to possibly win over tyranny-of-the-majority does not support the Condorcet criterion."

PF

parker friedland Sun 8 Apr 2018 7:34PM

By the way, SRV-PR is not even proportional. In this forum discussion on CES, Warren included an example of when SRV-PR can fail to elect a single Democrat even when 49% of voters are Democrats and give max stars to the Democrat and min stars to the Republicans: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/electionscience/proportional$20srv$3F%7Csort:date/electionscience/aOMyxkoey4Q/KepDTrY7AwAJ

If you want to have a proportional multi winner adaption to STAR voting, I suggest that you define STAR-PR as one of the fallowing:

  1. Harmonic voting ( http://scorevoting.net/QualityMulti.html ), except that between the outcomes with the highest quality according to harmonic voting's quality function, hold an automatic runoff between those two outcomes where everybody's vote automatically goes to the outcome out of the two that had candidates that the voter gave a higher scores on average too.

  2. Normal SRV-PR, exept that each round, the number of ballots the candidate with the second highest score needs to be preferred on to beat the candidate with the highest score gets greater and greater. In the last round, the candidate with the 2nd highest score would only need to be preferred on 1/2 ballots to win, on the the 2nd to last round, they would need to be preferred on 2/3rds of ballots, on the 3rd to last round, 3/4th of ballots, on the forth to last round, 4/5th's of ballots, on the 5th to last round, 5/6th of ballots, etc. (however I'm not sure about whether this is proportional)

  3. RRV, except that the first winner is elected via STAR instead of score.

  4. Duplicate each vote so you have two versions of everybody's ballot (you don't have to actually duplicate each person's ballot, but it is easier to explain it this way). We shall refer to these two parts as two different types of votes: score votes and a preference votes. One of the two ballots will be used for scores and the other will be used for the runoffs. Each round, use the score votes to pick the top 2 candidates and the preference votes to chose which of the two candidates gets elected that round. Each round, the score votes are re-weighted using the RRV re-weighting equation. However, the preference votes will not be re-weighted. Instead, a droop quota % of the preference votes that preferred the runoff winner will be exhausted (and the % of those votes chosen for exaustion will be the % that gave the highest difference in scores to each of those two candidates that made it to the runoff).

All three of these methods would be proportional (EDIT: methods 2 and 3 may not always be proportional when electing a small number of candidates but approach proportionality when electing a lot more) while still reducing to STAR voting in the single winner case. I posted this discussion on Reddit ( https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/8at51y/what_should_starpr_be_srvpr_is_horribly_broken/
) and the CES forums ( https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/electionscience/HkgoqQiGN4k ), so if anyone wants do debate which of the methods should be called STAR-PR or if they have an entirely different proposal, they can join in on the discussion there.

Also, here are some other terms that you might want to add the fallowing to the nerd glossary:

Harmonic voting - http://scorevoting.net/QualityMulti.html
Proportional approval voting - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gnsgo3z8UIg
Schulze STV - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_STV
CPO STV - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPO-STV
Single Non-Transferable Vote (vote for just one candidate in a multi-winner election)
Monroe's method - http://scorevoting.net/MonroeMW.html
Kotze-Pereira Transformation - https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/6xnc2i/visualization_of_the_kotzepereira_transform_which/
Proportional Score Voting (like proportional approval voting, but with the KP Transformation. It's even more proportional then re-weighted range voting)
PLACE Voting - https://medium.com/@jameson.quinn/place-example-bbfcd85a232f
Monotonicity criterion
Consistency criterion
Participation criterion
DH3 Pathology - http://scorevoting.net/DH3.html
Droop quota
Hare quota
Party List Voting
Sainte-Laguë method - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webster/Sainte-Lagu%C3%AB_method
D'Hondt method - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Hondt_method
Open List
Closed List
Approval List (like open list but you get to vote for as many candidates within a party as you want)
Random Ballot Voting - https://www.drmaciver.com/2013/09/towards-a-more-perfect-democracy/
Weighted Representatives - when politicians have different voting weights proportional to how many votes they received
Gerrymandering
District drawing algorithms - http://rangevoting.org/TheorDistrict.html
The Shortest Split line algorithm - http://rangevoting.org/SplitLR.html
The Compactness algorithm - http://bdistricting.org/2010/
The Center for Election Science - https://electology.org/
The Center for Range Voting - http://rangevoting.org/
The Equal Vote Coalition - https://www.equal.vote/
Real Choice Voting - rcvoregon.org (can't connect to their website. Was it taken down?)
FairVote - http://www.fairvote.org/

MF

Mark Frohnmayer Mon 9 Apr 2018 1:13PM

Parker, this is a silly example. It presumes the Democrats, who have 49% of the electorate, run 1 candidate for N seats. Yes, because of the runoff, a scenario like this can technically happen, but when examining failure modes it's important to attempt to quantify when and how often they occur. Smith has acknowledged his own bias against STAR on the Election Science group. I take everything he says about the system at this point with a huge grain of salt.

AZ

Alan Zundel Mon 9 Apr 2018 7:07PM

Good gosh that's a big glossary!

PF

parker friedland Tue 10 Apr 2018 12:27AM

Parker, this is a silly example. It presumes the Democrats, who have 49% of the
electorate, run 1 candidate for N seats. Yes, because of the runoff, a scenario like this
can technically happen, but when examining failure modes it's important to attempt to
quantify when and how often they occur.

But this example shows that SRV-PR does not guarantee proportionality. And if SRV-PR ever does eventually humiliate itself in a public election by not being proportional, it will not just humiliate itself, but every other rated voting method along with it.

Smith has acknowledged his own bias against STAR on the Election Science group. I
take everything he says about the system at this point with a huge grain of salt.

How is that relevant? Calling out Smith's biases does not dismiss the election example I borrowed from him. You can dismiss the example by explaining why it is wrong or why it might not happen in a real election but dismissing Smith as biased does not dismiss the points he is making.

SW

Sara Wolf Tue 10 Apr 2018 1:00AM

Hi Parker,
Thanks for digging in. I'm interested to see more in depth comparisons of the PR systems, but this is quite off topic for this glossary thread. Do you want to start a thread on proportional systems and the algorithms that can be used?

I know of a number of people who are digging in and looking at the variations on the algorithms that could offer various perspectives on the pros and cons of various options.

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