[Lnc-business] commentary on Scottish STV
Tim Hagan
tim.hagan at lp.org
Wed Feb 27 01:16:26 EST 2019
This is a good learning experiment. I am wondering if one of the
problems is that we are a relatively small groups electing a relatively
large group. Scottish STV uses the Integer function to determine the
threshold. It probably works much better with thousands of voters
electing four or five positions. Rounding up to a whole number for the
threshold instead of using a fractional threshold means that at the last
round candidates below the threshold still get elected. In our vote,
four candidates reached the threshold of at least 2 votes and the rest
of the winners were were still below the threshold at the last round. We
also had candidates tied and the program selecting one at random to
eliminate. Using a method with a fractional threshold gets rid of the
random tie-breakers and has all of the winning candidates reaching the
threshold.
OpaVote allows us to recount with different methods, so I tried it with
the Membership Support Committee vote.
Scottish STV: Paul Bilyeu, Steve Dasbach, Kenny Kelly, Jeff Lyons, Alex
Merced, Mayna Myers, Omar Recuero, Valerie Sarwark, and Ashely Shade
Meek STV with Whole threshold: Paul Bilyeu, Steve Dasbach, Kenny Kelly,
Jeff Lyons, Alex Merced, Jennifer Moore, Mayna Myers, Sean Parr, and
Valerie Sarwark
Meek STV with Fractional threshold: Paul Bilyeu, Steve Dasbach, Kenny
Kelly, Jeff Lyons, Alex Merced, Jennifer Moore, Mayna Myers, Omar
Recuero, and Valerie Sarwark
ERS97 STV: Paul Bilyeu, Steve Dasbach, Kenny Kelly, Jeff Lyons, Alex
Merced, Jennifer Moore, Mayna Myers, Omar Recuero, and Valerie Sarwark
Warren STV with Fractional threshold: Paul Bilyeu, Steve Dasbach, Kenny
Kelly, Jeff Lyons, Alex Merced, Jennifer Moore, Mayna Myers, Omar
Recuero, and Valerie Sarwark
N. Ireland STV: Paul Bilyeu, Steve Dasbach, Kenny Kelly, Jeff Lyons,
Alex Merced, Mayna Myers, Omar Recuero, Valerie Sarwark, and Ashely
Shade
Bilyeu, Dasbach, Merced, and Sarwark got enough first-place votes to win
in the first round with all methods. Lyons, Kelly, and Myers are
favorites who win with the STV methods. The differences come down
Jennifer Moore, Sean Parr, Omar Recuero, and Ashely Shade. I haven't
looked at the ballots to see the exact reason why the results change.
---
Tim Hagan
Treasurer, Libertarian National Committee
On 2019-02-26 17:12, Caryn Ann Harlos via Lnc-business wrote:
> Elizabeth this was a trial run to learn what we can and what we cannot
> learn. If we are going to promote alternate voting systems, we should
> know
> more what we are talking about and tests like these will build that
> knowledge. I agree this one should be a do-over.
>
> I disagree that constant negativity encourages positive innovation.
> Our
> Party culture unfortunately is like that - and when anyone dares to try
> to
> change things they get heckled down. This is a culture problem to
> address.
>
> The same thing happens when we talk about new messaging tactics, new
> campaigning tactics, etc. Shyer people will be dissuaded from
> suggesting
> or trying.
>
> I am positive there are better voting systems for us to use as a body,
> and
> this one has proven to not be it. But it gained us real experiential
> knowledge.
>
> -Caryn Ann
>
> On Tue, Feb 26, 2019 at 6:04 PM Elizabeth Van Horn via Lnc-business <
> lnc-business at hq.lp.org> wrote:
>
>> Hmm, we have people with 9 & 5 votes, being beaten-out by those with
>> only 4 & 3 votes?
>>
>> Well, I've little to no faith in our results then, and this won't
>> instill confidence in LNC procedures for our members.
>>
>> ---
>> Elizabeth Van Horn
>>
>>
>> On 2019-02-26 18:52, Joe Bishop-Henchman via Lnc-business wrote:
>> > I also just played the results Ms. Harlos sent out and came to the
>> > same fascinating (to me, at least) realization. Ranked choice voting
>> > works great if 800 people are choosing 5 or 9 spots; when it's 12 or
>> > 13 people choosing 9 spots, there are odd results. Especially if each
>> > voter is limited to nine choices, resulting in premature exhaustion of
>> > several ballots.
>> >
>> > Here are the final results with number of distributed votes:
>> > V. Sarwark - 2.00
>> > P. Bilyeu - 2.00
>> > Merced - 2.00
>> > Dasbach - 2.00
>> > Lyons - 1.91
>> > Kelly - 1.00
>> > Shade - 0.66
>> > Recuero - 0.50
>> > Myers - 0.50
>> >
>> > Forget majority - three of our final 9 were elected with less than one
>> > vote after fully distributing everything. As the report indicated, 37
>> > of the 40 rounds broke a tie by random, including on the final round.
>> > With that many random choices, we could probably re-run the results
>> > and get a different final three members each time. (One reading of
>> > Scottish STV is that while it doesn't require a majority it still
>> > requires hitting the threshold of 2, and only four people did so.)
>> >
>> > I compared it to approval voting (the usual method we have used for
>> > filling vacancies), assuming (probably incorrectly) that everyone
>> > would have voted for the same people:
>> >
>> > Valerie Sarwark 12
>> > Paul Bilyeu 11
>> > Alex Merced 11
>> > Jeff Lyons 10
>> > Steve Dasbach 9
>> > Jennifer Moore 9 (not elected)
>> > Omar Recuero 7
>> > Fernando Davis 5 (not elected)
>> > Johnny Walker 5 (not elected)
>> >
>> > Tyler Bargenquast 4
>> > Brandon Bobbit 4
>> > Bryan Bombardier 4
>> > PJ Capelli 4
>> > Jennifer Flower 4
>> > Cecil Ince 4
>> > Kenny Kelly 4 (elected)
>> > Mayna Myers 4 (elected)
>> > Kevin Warmhold 4
>> > Marc Lazerow 3
>> > Kevin Moore 3
>> > James Olivi 3
>> > Fransisco Olvera 3
>> > Sean Parr 3
>> > Ashely Shade 3 (elected)
>> > Sharon Smith 3
>> >
>> > The starkest differences between the two voting methods are that J.
>> > Moore appeared on 9 of our 13 ballots, on all but one in the top six,
>> > but was not elected, while Shade (appearing on just three ballots as
>> > 4th, 5th, and 7th choices), was elected by random coin flip ahead of
>> > over a dozen other people who appeared on more ballots.
>> >
>> > I would suggest if we do this again in the future:
>> > * No limit on # of candidates to rank, to prevent premature ballot
>> > exhaustion.
>> > * In an extended ballot where we're all sharing results, those voting
>> > last have an incredible information advantage for tactical voting.
>> > Results should be secret until voting has closed.
>> > * If not requiring a majority, establishing a floor for # of votes to
>> > be elected. In the end, what we did was for all purposes no different
>> > from randomly picking 9 LNC members to each pick one person for the
>> > committee, except worse since three of those elected got less than 1
>> > vote.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > JBH
>> >
>> > ------------
>> > Joe Bishop-Henchman
>> > LNC Member (At-Large)
>> > joe.bishop-henchman at lp.org
>> > www.facebook.com/groups/189510455174837
>> >
>> > On 2019-02-22 04:32, Alicia Mattson via Lnc-business wrote:
>> >> I have a number of comments I wish to make about the Scottish STV
>> >> voting
>> >> system, but I don't have time to write it all up this evening. I will
>> >> start with these comments and add more details to these thoughts
>> >> later.
>> >>
>> >> It is one thing to read the theory and rules for a voting system on a
>> >> webpage, but it's another thing to print out the paper ballots and
>> >> enact
>> >> the process yourself to see the effects of each step. Last night, I
>> >> took
>> >> the 7 ballots cast up to that point, printed them out on paper, and
>> >> put
>> >> them in piles on the floor to manually experience how it works.
>> >>
>> >> It didn't take long before my eyes got wide. Then a little later my
>> >> jaw
>> >> dropped as I realized more and more implications of the process. When
>> >> I
>> >> was done, I paced around the living room in a bit of a rant as I put
>> >> my
>> >> realizations into words.
>> >>
>> >> Clearly, this voting system was envisioned for situations in which the
>> >> number of ballots being cast VASTLY outnumbers (by orders of
>> >> magnitude)
>> >> both the number of seats being filled and also the number of
>> >> candidates.
>> >>
>> >> In our case, however, if everyone had voted it would have been 17
>> >> ballots
>> >> cast to choose from more than 40 candidates to fill 9 seats. I only
>> >> saw
>> >> ballots from 12 people on one election and 13 on the other, making the
>> >> ratios even worse. This seems to be in the range of
>> >> worst-case-scenario
>> >> for this voting system.
>> >>
>> >> With these ratios, the process devolves into essentially a casino game
>> >> of
>> >> chance necessitating random candidate eliminations early in the
>> >> process.
>> >> After the first round of vote distributions, we might as well just
>> >> tell the
>> >> candidates to play Russian roulette...or for fewer dead bodies we
>> >> could
>> >> just draw names out of a hat.
>> >>
>> >> If I correctly understand the process, then it's mathematically
>> >> impossible
>> >> for the number of ballots cast in these two elections to elect more
>> >> than 6
>> >> candidates to each committee. Looking at the vote distribution, we'll
>> >> elect at least 3 but no more than 6, depending on the outcome of some
>> >> random selections, so we're in for re-balloting anyway.
>> >>
>> >> More specifics later...
>> >>
>> >> -Alicia
>>
>
>
> --
>
> * In Liberty,*
>
> *Libertarian Party and Libertarian National Committee Secretary *-
> Caryn.Ann.
> Harlos at LP.org <Caryn.Ann.Harlos at LP.org> or Secretary at LP.org.
> *Chair, LP Historical Preservation Committee* - LPedia at LP.org
> Call me at 561.523.2250 and follow my public figure page at
> facebook.com/pinkflameofliberty/
>
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