Re: [Ag Meinungsfindungstool] [Ag-buergerbeteiligung] Score Voting

["Christoph \"Pluto\" Puppe" <piraten AT stderr.de>]

Hi Clay,

I've taken the liberty to cross post this mail to two other working committees and  fwd your mail as a fyi to the elections administrator as I think your input could be of value there as well.

For the next party convention, I don't think I'm for one are not inclined to format this voting scheme into a motion. As it is complex to count. We believe in human readable and controllable voting methods. So all ballots are actually hand counted while ppl stand by and watch, tweet their observerations and recount if need be. So much for the "internet party", but then, an electronic voting with a fool proof check is not yet developed, even if there are many tries in this direction.

For electronic means to collect opinions, this is a completely different story. As said, the ranking system of the news and mailing lists, will most probably use your system. All members of the party get to vote on posts and posters, can hand out +5 to -5 points and do so as often as they wish. As the database is fast in counting and computing, the score is to easily fixed and stated. All participants are elegible to be voted on. Basic idea behind this: upvote, promote people on merits. Make their voice heard over the rumble.

Another electronic system we use is liquid feedback. There you are reduced to a simple yes or no vote. But it's not about persons, but motions. Everybody can start a motion and everybody (in theory, practical problems permitting) can vote. Beeing able to score vote on a motion is definitely a thought worth to be discussed. Sometimes a persons approval or disapproval is not 100%. So to able to give 7 out of 10 points and then ... good question ... there need to be a threshold, when the motion is accepted. 

What would you think about this idea: given now a majority of yes votes is needed. This would translate into more than 50% of all possible point are scored? eg, 100 people vote, in summary there are 501 points out of 1000 possible point scored, the motion is accepted.

Yours

Christoph

2012/5/12 Clay Shentrup <clay AT electology.org>

Christoph,

Sure, you can think of Score Voting as more points to count. The benefits are:

1) Score Voting is better for expressive ("sincere") voters

A lot people want to be able to express more than just "I will approve Nader and Gore but not Bush". They want to be able to say "Green=10, Democrat=6, Republican=1". For them, Score Voting is a huge improvement, because they can express not only order but also intensity of preference.

2) Score Voting is better for tactical voters

For tactical voters, it will usually be best to vote "Approval-style" — e.g. all 10's and 0's on a 0-10 scale. However, Score Voting is better for them, because they get even more satisfaction, since the expressive voters are "paying" them by giving up a small amount of power in order to be able to more fully express themselves.

3) Score Voting is better for the group overall

Because of interesting mathematical effects, when a voter decides to be sincere instead of tactical, it increases the overall utility of the other voters by more than it decreases that sincere voter's utility. In other words, each sincere voters creates a net increase in happiness among the whole of the electorate. This is why you see Score Voting getting even lower Bayesian Regret than Approval Voting, as long as not everyone is strategic:

http://ScoreVoting.net/BayRegsFig.html

4) Score Voting may be more intuitive, thus requiring less explanation

Because people are so familiar with the notion of rating things, like on Amazon.com or IMDB.com, we believe that Score Voting will be better understood by the public, or by new members in your party elections. Once you mention that it's just "scoring the options, just like rating a movie", and they understand that it's ratings instead of rankings, the rest should be very intuitive. At least, that's what my years of polling and other research suggests. I encourage you to conduct your own experiments and see for yourselves what happens before putting it to the test in a major election. I think you'll be pleased with the results.

5) Score Voting can actually be better even for sincere voters

The math Ph.D. who runs our group tried an experiment I suggested. He looked at how well off the sincere voters would be, based on how many tactical voters there were. It turns out that if you get enough sincere voters, then even the sincere voters are better off than they would be with Approval Voting. This is in addition to the fact that they're happier by getting the chance to express themselves. It's pretty mathematical, but I think any reasonably intelligent person can make sense of this if you read it carefully.

http://ScoreVoting.net/ShExpRes.html

6) For less savvy voters, a sincere Score Voting ballot can be more powerful than a mistaken attempt at the optimal Approval Voting threshold

See the part about "No math skills" here.

http://scorevoting.net/RVstrat6.html#lesson

That's my attempt to distill many years of research into a readable email. While I do think Approval Voting is a very good system (better than any ranked system), I think Score Voting is even better. And I think the Pirates are the only sufficiently smart and open-minded political organization in the world who might be prepared to try such an innovative system at present. So please consider these points, and feel free to contact me with any comments or questions.

Best,

Clay

On Sat, May 12, 2012 at 12:00 PM, Christoph "Pluto" Puppe <piraten AT stderr.de> wrote:

Hi Clay,

I've forwarded your mail to other factions inside of the party, I dunno I've you've received feedback from them. This is an open Mailinglist, not an internal. So everybody has a say :)

I for one like the score voting idea. Right now there are plans to use a kind of score voting on mailinglists and the news board. We're preparing to use the reputation system, where everybody can assign points to posts and they get colelcted into the reputation of the sender. This is not exactly what your system does, but I'd deem it comparable, don't you think?

In approval and in score you can support your tactical and your prefered candidate, it's just more points to count, or?

Yours

2012/4/28 Clay Shentrup <clay AT electology.org>

To whom it may concern:

My name is Clay Shentrup, and I live in San Francisco. I co-founded The Center for Election Science, a non-profit group which researches voting systems. Our president is a Princeton math Ph.D. who has championed the use of Score Voting, also known as Range Voting.

Score Voting is a simple voting system which allows you to score the candidates on a scale, just like products on Amazon.com. For instance, you could rate the candidates from 0 to 10. The candidate(s) with the most points wins.

Approval Voting is just Score Voting on a 0-1 scale instead of 0-10. For tactical voters who use only 0's and 10's, the systems are the same. But many voters would rather express themselves more clearly, rather than spend time calculating the most effective strategy. There are many other reasons that Score Voting is preferable to Approval Voting. And it is also simpler than any ranked voting method. Here's a blog post I wrote, which goes into more detail.

http://clayshentrup.blogspot.com/2012/03/should-pirate-party-use-score-voting.html

Best regards,

Clay Shentrup

-- 
Clay Shentrup

Secretary, Director

The Center for Election Science

http://www.electology.org/

415.295.CLAY

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Pluto   -   SysAdmin of Hades
Free information! Freedom through knowledge. Wisdom for all!! =:-)

http://wiki.piratenpartei.de/Benutzer:Christoph_Puppe

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-- 
Clay Shentrup

Secretary, Director

The Center for Election Science

http://www.electology.org/

415.295.CLAY

-- 
Gruss

Pluto   -   SysAdmin of Hades
Free information! Freedom through knowledge. Wisdom for all!! =:-)

http://wiki.piratenpartei.de/Benutzer:Christoph_Puppe

If everything seems under control, you're not going fast enough
- Mario Andretti