Making Democracy Count
Ismar Volic . 2024 . BvtLib 324.6 VOL
Part 1 . Voting
p001 Introduction
p009 PART 1 Voting
p011 ch01 The Best Way to Choose the Winner
p015 16yo attacked on TikTok for asking about the origin and value of algebra. Mathematicians explained that she asked deep and substantive questions that mathematicians struggled with for centuries
p015 n-dimensional object embedding theory
p016 Euler's theorem 1736 and internet encryption
p017 Social choice theory
- p020 voting methods are filtered through meshes of anonymity, neutrality, and monotonicity
p023 filibuster is Dutch word for pirate
p023 cloture fillibuster overridden if 60% of senators support it
p028 ch02 The Worst Way to Choose the Winner
p028 plurality widely used because it is "simple"
- p028 520,000 elected US officials, almost all elected by plurality
- p031 plurality is deeply flawed
- p033 "espousing fringe ideologies, as Trump did"
- p036 up to 7 presidential elections 12% decided by a spoiler
- p037 "Would you buy a gallon of milk of there was a 12% chance it was spoiled?"
- Yes, if the alternative was no milk at all. Milk can be tested and boiled. Boiling politicians upsets most people.
- p037 1.5% of general races are decided by third party spoilers, but non-partisan races might ...
- or might not. data please,
p039 Maurice Duverger book Political Parties
- plurality elections lead to two-party systems
p040 Citizens United enabled large political donations, which author claims disadvantages minor party candidates
p043 "2011 Give us your cash ad on YouTube" cannot find, author doesn't understand web search on youtube - especially with more than 4 billion videos and youtube's funding formula Permanent link please
- p044 2020 presidential election turnout 62%, 30th place among OECD countries
p046 2020 Alaska Instant-runoff voting
- p047 what if's with 6 candidates and second top-two runoff election
- p048 2022 French presidential election, six candidates, top 2 chosen for runoff, 1.2% of total vote difference between second and third, 24% votes for 9 other candidates. Ranked choice instant runoff could have made a big difference here ... but those other votes were NOT "wasted", because the issues raised by ALL candidates might be adopted by the 2027 candidates. Elections result in CUMULATIVE knowledge of voter preferences
- p050 turnout for runoff elections is 35% lower than first round. Number 2 might try harder, but number 3 through 9 give up.
p053 ch03 From Best to Worst
- p064 Alaska 2022 special election:
Peltola/Palin/Begich first-place(first round?) tally 75,799 / 58,937 / 53,810, sum 188,546
- second round tally 91,266 / 86,026, sum 177,292 ... Peltola still won, but where did 11,254 second round votes disappear to? The book's author focuses on party, I focus on information that is NOT conveyed by voting.
- p065 Minor candidates could assert themselves in the political process without being spoilers
- p066 Author attributes campaign incivility to plurality voting. Perhaps the few jurisdictions with civil voters also prefer instant runoff voting. Causality can point both ways
p066 Jean Quan won Oakland mayor because of her 25,000 second and third place votes, after 9 elimination rounds. Or because 67,000 Oaklanders are Asian, and some chose ethnicity third.
- p067 Voter "mental paralysis overload" minimized with fewer candidates, maybe 4 or 5
- p067 voters "vote many times" but only one (or zero) votes count
KHL actually, their voting patterns convey more information than just their vote, and those patterns can convey much useful (anonymized) information to their fellow citizens, bureaucrats, politicians
- Downside - detailed pattern information and Big AI can de-anonymize voters and expose them to personal retribution
- p068 2009 Burlington Vermont rank-choice voting elected a Progressive rather than the plurality-choice Republican. Rank-choice repealed for 2010. WELL, DUH! *THAT* is why we don't DESERVE ranked choice.
- p069 ... suspicion ... The political-cultural shift that would have to accompany the transition to instant runoff is possibly its greatest obstacle.
- "I don't need to win, I just need you to lose"
p069 Center squeeze encourages political polarization by core supporters
p072 instant runoff exhibits "paradox of positive association" monotonicity
- p076 1770 lecture on fair voting practices
p076 Borda count
p076 Borda 1792-1801 Tables of Logarithms of sines, secants, and tangents, co-secants, co-sines, and co-tangents for the Quarter of the Circle divided into 100 degrees, the degree into 100 minutes, and the minute into 100 seconds
- p078 Borda count used for some elections in Slovenia and Iceland, many institutions with democratic governance, and sports trophies
- p079 "Cosmo (or something more potent) in hand" ??? Cosmopolitan cocktail?
p079 Måneskin 2016 Italian rock band
p084 Borda count fails independence of irrelevant alternatives
- p086 Condorcet was a leader of the French Revolution, died in prison as an aristocrat
p086 Condorcet 1785 Essay on the Application of Analysis to the Probability of Majority Decisions ... "is also one of the most pretentious and convoluted pieces of academic writing ever composed"
p089 Condorcet voting method (used by Washington State LP?)
p090 Condorcet cycle
p099 ch04 The Impossible Democracy
p104 Anonymity . Neutrality . Monotonicity . Majority . Condorcet . Independence of irrelevant alternatives
- p104 Kenneth Arrow shows we can call off the search party.
p106 Amartya Sen Nobel Economics 1998
- "individual liberties are incompatible with social needs" (???)
Around page 108, I stopped reading and skimming. Voting is important, and I mostly agree with the author's conclusions, but I focus on other world-survival priorities which receive very little attention.
p112 ch05 To Each Their Own
p124 ch06 Strategy and Manipulation
- p124 Academic hiring... choosing the method to bias outcome
p141 ch07 And the Winner Is...
Part2 . Representation
p149 ch08 This Old House
p173 ch09 Rather Devisive than Indecisive
p183 ch10 Divisor and Conquer
p189 Webster apportionment or major fractions or Sainte-Laguë method
André Sainte-Laguë (1882–1950) 1910
Daniel Webster( 1782-1852 ) 1832
- p190
p207 ch10 A Country Divided
207 gerrymandering
p304 An Infrastructure Plan
- Use instant runoff voting in single winner elections
- Eliminate the Electoral College
- Use popular vote with instant runoff for presidential elections
- Use multimember districts with single transferrable voting
- Increase the size of the House of Representatives
Use the Webster apportionment method
- Use independent districting commissions
- Introduce more political quantitative literacy into school curricula