Handy Tools for Large-Group Decision-making
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This is an exposition of my understanding of voting methods and an argument for using Approval voting or Score voting. It was originally delivered at several Burning Man 2012 events, including the Phage Camp talks series, the Future Camp talks. An abbreviated version was delivered at Ignite Black Rock City.
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Handy Tools for Large-Group Decision-making
- 1. Handy Tools for Group Decision-making
- 2. 3 Tools we Use...
- 4. Consensus
- 5. Free Association “The conclusion to draw is that there will not be one kind of community existing and one kind of life led in utopia. Utopia is a framework for utopias, a place where people are at liberty to join together voluntarily to pursue and attempt to realize their own vision of the good life in the ideal community but where no one can impose his own utopian vision upon others.” — Robert Nozick, “Anarchy, State, and Utopia”
- 6. The Problem?
- 10. INCLUSIVE EXCLUSIVE
- 11. LABORIOUS IMMEDIATE
- 12. FREE ASSOCIATION DO-OCRACY CONSENSUS DELEGATION
- 13. As you know it: Plurality Voting One vote per voter Option with the most votes wins
- 14. MAJORITY
- 15. WOMEN MEN
- 16. GINGERS GOOD-NATURED PEOPLE
- 18. Duverger’s Law Plurality = Two-Party Domination
- 19. YOUR PARTY THE OTHER GUYS
- 21. Voting (as you know it) Sucks
- 22. The Reform: Instant Runoff Voting Voters rank the options
- 23. The Reform: Instant Runoff Voting If there is no first-choice majority, eliminate the least popular option and use the second-choice votes of those voters. Repeat until a majority is found.
- 25. Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem NO RANKED VOTING SYSTEM Oh No CAN GUARANTEE A RESULT You WHICH: Don’t 1. RESPECTS UNANIMITY 2. IS INDEPENDENT OF IRRELEVANT ALTERNATIVES
- 26. Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem 1. Unanimity is respected Oh No You > Don’t
- 27. Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem 2. The result is independent Oh No from irrelevant alternatives You > Don’t > >
- 28. ?
- 30. A trip to the movies
- 31. Plurality Voting Battlefield Earth One vote per voter Bio-Dome Option with the most votes The Room wins Gigli Catwoman
- 32. Instant Runoff Voting If there is no first-choice majority, eliminate the least popular option and use the Battlefield Earth second-choice votes of Bio-Dome those voters. The Room Repeat until a majority is Gigli found. Catwoman
- 33. What People Do 1.Opt-in: “I’m up for Bio-Dome or Catwoman”
- 34. What People Do 2. Expressions of Preference Intensity: “Options A & B look great, C looks good, and D looks meh.” “Option A looks great, B looks almost as good, C & D look meh.”
- 35. Consensus
- 36. Two Consensus-Driven Voting Methods Opt-in Battlefield Earth = Bio-Dome The Room Approval Voting Gigli Catwoman
- 37. Two Consensus-Driven Voting Methods Rate the options from 0 to 3 Expressions of Preference Intensity Battlefield Earth = Bio-Dome The Room Score/Range Voting Gigli Catwoman
- 38. Consensus-Driven Voting 55 > > 35 > > 10 > >
- 39. Consensus-Driven Voting 80 20
- 41. Rate the options from 0 to 3 Battlefield Earth Battlefield Earth Bio-Dome Bio-Dome The Room The Room Gigli Gigli Catwoman Catwoman APPROVE SCORE
- 42. Questions?
- 44. Score Voting 3 1 0 2
- 45. Approval Voting LIMIT OF APPROVAL
- 46. Independence of Clones 45% 55%
- 47. Independence of Clones 45% 30% 25%
- 48. Independence of Clones Spoiled! 45% 30% 25%
- 49. Condorcet Methods Compare every pair of options The winner is the option that is favored by the majority against every other option individually
Editor's Notes
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- We dither between these, from working for consensus, to at other times say: do your own thing, or free associate! But there may come a time when Burning Man will need to speak with one voice on large matters. After all, far smaller gatherings have made history this, way. The Seneca Falls convention was attended by 300 people, and it’s in the history books for the document it produced. At least, I believe we should be prepared for that need, and not be caught unawares.\n
- We dither between these, from working for consensus, to at other times say: do your own thing, or free associate! But there may come a time when Burning Man will need to speak with one voice on large matters. After all, far smaller gatherings have made history this, way. The Seneca Falls convention was attended by 300 people, and it’s in the history books for the document it produced. At least, I believe we should be prepared for that need, and not be caught unawares.\n
- So what's the status quo?\nWhat you know is called "Plurality" voting. One vote per voter. Candidate with the most votes wins.\nSimple, tidy, and terrible.\n
- "if one candidate is preferred by a majority (more than 50%) of voters, then that candidate must win"\n\n
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- Likewise plurality voting ensures we’ll end up with a Two-party duopoly, through Duverger’s Law and the spoiler effect.\n
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- The story starts with this man, Ralph Nader, in 2003. I was living in Austin and I saw Nader reps collecting signatures for his 2004 ballot access. Time and again I saw these reps harrassed and harangued, not by conservative opponents but by liberals, who blamed him for "stealing" votes from Gore, and "spoiling" the election. I knew something had to be broken in a system that turned natural allies into enemies.\n
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- The most popular reform out there is "Instant Runoff Voting". It seems tailor-made to the Ralph Nader problem. Voters rank the candidates, but if there's no majority winner from the first-choice votes, the least-popular candidate is eliminated, and those voters' votes are redistributed to their second-choice candidate, and so on until the remaining top choices select a majority winner. This is a bit more complex, but at least seems like a plausible solution, right? Wrong. It's terrible.\n
- The most popular reform out there is "Instant Runoff Voting". It seems tailor-made to the Ralph Nader problem. Voters rank the candidates, but if there's no majority winner from the first-choice votes, the least-popular candidate is eliminated, and those voters' votes are redistributed to their second-choice candidate, and so on until the remaining top choices select a majority winner. This is a bit more complex, but at least seems like a plausible solution, right? Wrong. It's terrible, and intuitively so once you step outside of the voting mindset.\n
- http://rangevoting.org/Duverger.html\n
- A sort of uber criterion, Arrow's Impossibility Theorem prooves that it is impossible for a ranked choice voting system to solve all the following:\n\nThere be no dictator (benevolent or otherwise)\nUnanimity is respected: If all voters prefer apple pie over cherry pie, then the result prefers apple pie over cherry pie\nThe result is independent from irrelevant alternatives: If the voters favor apple pie over cherry pie, introducing the option of pumpkin pie does not make the result favor cherry pie\n\n
- A sort of uber criterion, Arrow's Impossibility Theorem prooves that it is impossible for a ranked choice voting system to solve all the following:\n\nThere be no dictator (benevolent or otherwise)\nUnanimity is respected: If all voters prefer apple pie over cherry pie, then the result prefers apple pie over cherry pie\nThe result is independent from irrelevant alternatives: If the voters favor apple pie over cherry pie, introducing the option of pumpkin pie does not make the result favor cherry pie\n\n
- A sort of uber criterion, Arrow's Impossibility Theorem prooves that it is impossible for a ranked choice voting system to solve all the following:\n\nThere be no dictator (benevolent or otherwise)\nUnanimity is respected: If all voters prefer apple pie over cherry pie, then the result prefers apple pie over cherry pie\nThe result is independent from irrelevant alternatives: If the voters favor apple pie over cherry pie, introducing the option of pumpkin pie does not make the result favor cherry pie\n\n
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- Also, even in academia our approach to comparing voting systems has been confounding. For hundreds of years thoughtful people have been trying their darnedest to come up with valid ways of judging different methods. These criteria. while demonstrably valid, haven't brought us closer to a solution.Here on the left we have a list of voting methods, and along the left is a list of criteria. As you can see, no method passes every criteria, and to make matters worse, some methods have hidden flaws, of inscrutable complexity or difficulty in aggregation. Ultimately, they characterize these systems, but do not illuminate them.\n
- I submit that your intuition for this problem is much better developed at the social level, the human level, than it is at the societal level. Let’s test this out by attempting to considering the problem at the social level and applying our finding to the societal level. For example let’s consider the situation: You and a group of friends trying to decide what movie to watch together.\n
- Let’s apply that to our movie decision. We all each select a single movie, and the one which was selected by the most people would win and we would watch that, regardless the opinions of the others.\nWhat does your intuition say about that? Mine says: what a terrible way to treat your friends! Certainly we'd include them in the decision-making. That's plurality voting.\n\n
- Alright so what about Instant Runoff Voting, it’s better, right? Under the common reform, IRV, you'd all rank your choices, eliminate, rerank, etc. How ridiculously obtuse! Why wouldn't you just consider everyone's opinions simultaneously as they're expressed?\n
- In more casual situations, the people will simply volunteer: I'm up for any of these films: a, b, c. Others do the same: I don't want to see b, but I'm up for a, and c. In the end, they come to a consensus drawn from their most mutually-overlapping approval of the options.\n
- The other, which may arises when more subtle opinions are expressed. "I am so into seeing A, I could go for B but not C." "Ugh A looks terrible, let's see B or C." "Yeah A looks tacky, B is the best!". Here, the participants have expressed a range of opinions about each option, and the ultimate selection is drawn from the integration of these preferences, and the intensities thereof.\n
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- These 2 practices actually already have names in the voting world: Approval Voting and Score voting, and there's a lot to be said for them. They're super-simple to vote and aggregate.\n
- These 2 practices actually already have names in the voting world: Approval Voting and Score voting, and there's a lot to be said for them. They're super-simple to vote and aggregate.\n
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- They’re also more expressive than rank-based systems, which allows them to defeat Arrow’s Impossibility Theroem\n
- They’re also more expressive than rank-based systems, which allows them to defeat Arrow’s Impossibility Theroem\n
- They’re also more expressive than rank-based systems, which allows them to defeat Arrow’s Impossibility Theroem\n
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- As you can do via the Condorcet Method, a really beautiful system in concept, in which voters rank all options and the system runs all the options against each other in pair-wise run-offs, and selects as winner the option that beats all others.\n