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Ranked Choice Voting app

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gepr

Ranked Choice Voting app

https://rankit.vote/

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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

Steve Smith

Re: Ranked Choice Voting app

glen -

> https://rankit.vote/
>
thanks for bringing the topic up again. I know you have made (mildly?
obliquely?) disparaging comments about ranked-choice voting before.
Rather than my trying to summarize (or impute) your real intention,
maybe you could comment on how you think ranked choice voting fits into
the bigger picture?

- steve

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gepr

Re: Ranked Choice Voting app

Well, the usual caveats apply. I really have no idea what I'm talking about. But that's never stopped me before.

My intuition is given unlimited campaign funding (as free speech), really really long campaign seasons, and influence ops (ala Russia), 1st past the post 2 party systems foment false dichotomy and hyper-partisanship. I'm a big fan of dialectic (which I regard as installing false dichotomies -- or falsely disjoint sets for more than 2 positions -- for the sake of argument). But everything in moderation. When a (false) dichotomy is taken seriously, it loses its rhetorical power.

IRV and RCV seem to push people toward mediocrity. Of course, I'm no fan of popular music (or popular novels, or popular TV shows, etc.). But if every time I turned on the radio they were playing extreme noise, Yanni, or black metal, I'd be similarly Disturbed (ha! get it?).

So, I see IRV and RCV as a potential solution to finding compromise in our elections instead of electing people by hyper-partisan elections, then expecting them to do all the compromising after they're in the new position. My criticisms of it would obtain after a few political cycles when *all* we get are the Bidens/Clintons/Bushes and the AOCs/Yangs/Bernies have no chance. It disgusts me to think a reasonable political strategy is "play to the middle". But at this point, I think we need a little of it. How can we mitigate against it later, though? I have no idea.

Maybe there's some efficacy in slicing out types of elections (which I've already tried to do by saying "IRV and RCV", recognizing they're not quite synonymous). Maybe Congress needs IRV, whereas the Executive needs 1st past the post? Or maybe the House needs 1st-past but the Senate needs IRV and the Executive needs RCV (and the top 2 get P and VP)? I don't know. But sometimes, a little mediocrity helps us identify where our tastes really do and don't diverge.

On 5/4/20 9:00 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
>> https://rankit.vote/
>>
> thanks for bringing the topic up again. I know you have made (mildly?
> obliquely?) disparaging comments about ranked-choice voting before.
> Rather than my trying to summarize (or impute) your real intention,
> maybe you could comment on how you think ranked choice voting fits into
> the bigger picture?

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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

cody dooderson

Re: Ranked Choice Voting app

I think that ranked choice is the best bet to escape from the horrible two party system. That being said there is not much insentive for the GOP or the DNC to adopt what could be enable competition. My friend Greg once said both parties are basically just advertising firms, and I still believe it.

Also the idea of voting from a personal computer or phone really interests me. If someone could figure out how to overcome it's flaws it would be awesome. From what I understand the issues are, correct me if I'm wrong,

* Anonymity while still providing some sort of record so one can verify that the vote was cast correctly. Equivalent to a paper ballot. There must be some math/ encryption trick for this.

* How to verify that the person voting is who they say they are.

On Mon, May 4, 2020, 10:31 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:

Well, the usual caveats apply. I really have no idea what I'm talking about. But that's never stopped me before.

My intuition is given unlimited campaign funding (as free speech), really really long campaign seasons, and influence ops (ala Russia), 1st past the post 2 party systems foment false dichotomy and hyper-partisanship. I'm a big fan of dialectic (which I regard as installing false dichotomies -- or falsely disjoint sets for more than 2 positions -- for the sake of argument). But everything in moderation. When a (false) dichotomy is taken seriously, it loses its rhetorical power.

IRV and RCV seem to push people toward mediocrity. Of course, I'm no fan of popular music (or popular novels, or popular TV shows, etc.). But if every time I turned on the radio they were playing extreme noise, Yanni, or black metal, I'd be similarly Disturbed (ha! get it?).

So, I see IRV and RCV as a potential solution to finding compromise in our elections instead of electing people by hyper-partisan elections, then expecting them to do all the compromising after they're in the new position. My criticisms of it would obtain after a few political cycles when *all* we get are the Bidens/Clintons/Bushes and the AOCs/Yangs/Bernies have no chance. It disgusts me to think a reasonable political strategy is "play to the middle". But at this point, I think we need a little of it. How can we mitigate against it later, though? I have no idea.

Maybe there's some efficacy in slicing out types of elections (which I've already tried to do by saying "IRV and RCV", recognizing they're not quite synonymous). Maybe Congress needs IRV, whereas the Executive needs 1st past the post? Or maybe the House needs 1st-past but the Senate needs IRV and the Executive needs RCV (and the top 2 get P and VP)? I don't know. But sometimes, a little mediocrity helps us identify where our tastes really do and don't diverge.

On 5/4/20 9:00 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
>> https://rankit.vote/
>>
> thanks for bringing the topic up again. I know you have made (mildly?
> obliquely?) disparaging comments about ranked-choice voting before.
> Rather than my trying to summarize (or impute) your real intention,
> maybe you could comment on how you think ranked choice voting fits into
> the bigger picture?

--
☣ uǝlƃ

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Gillian Densmore

Re: Ranked Choice Voting app

Me and a friend were talking about a topic like this the other day. Their are a lot of issues with washington. One is it's gotten really stuck on point fingers.

We came up with a rough geeky parallel to StarWars. lol people can probably guess where things are heading:

Washing has decided to invest some book of bad writing. Along the way basically a at first small rebellious hungry to hang on to ideals of what it thinks to be like good BFF, that you listen to all the time saying: that's a really bad idea! They basically become a mixture of the republic and some jedi. A much more extremist group comes then says: but we can't get anything done! So we'll just up and do it. They basically falling to the dark side

The Repblic and Jedi are a mix of people saying to hell with party polotics: they're a mixture of gop, jedi, and average citizens just wanting balanc.

The extremmesist of everyone (Gop citicens, Dems, etc) are Going to the dark side, some have the potential to be Sith.

It's my opinion this is the problem now. Two groups of extremists. Neither able or willing to here other side. Ranked voting might help that. I'm not sure now is a good idea to entirely get rid of both parties with a need for stability. But someway where it's a little less of this either GOP OR Dems. A 3rd or 4th viable working party could help with that.

It's my understanding Engand has several parties, and they work out to some degree, Adding more parties that'd work. We have a lot small "parties" that are their to basically troll. In my opinion.

Where as a few more legit parties potentially would help. The other side is actually following the rules everyone agreed to. The Sith have pretty much decided they'll just do what they want. regardless of what the rules actually say. While that's certainly one way to get things unstuck, but it's left a total mess in the process!

On Mon, May 4, 2020 at 11:56 AM cody dooderson <[hidden email]> wrote:

I think that ranked choice is the best bet to escape from the horrible two party system. That being said there is not much insentive for the GOP or the DNC to adopt what could be enable competition. My friend Greg once said both parties are basically just advertising firms, and I still believe it.
Also the idea of voting from a personal computer or phone really interests me. If someone could figure out how to overcome it's flaws it would be awesome. From what I understand the issues are, correct me if I'm wrong,
* Anonymity while still providing some sort of record so one can verify that the vote was cast correctly. Equivalent to a paper ballot. There must be some math/ encryption trick for this.
* How to verify that the person voting is who they say they are.

On Mon, May 4, 2020, 10:31 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:
Well, the usual caveats apply. I really have no idea what I'm talking about. But that's never stopped me before.

My intuition is given unlimited campaign funding (as free speech), really really long campaign seasons, and influence ops (ala Russia), 1st past the post 2 party systems foment false dichotomy and hyper-partisanship. I'm a big fan of dialectic (which I regard as installing false dichotomies -- or falsely disjoint sets for more than 2 positions -- for the sake of argument). But everything in moderation. When a (false) dichotomy is taken seriously, it loses its rhetorical power.

IRV and RCV seem to push people toward mediocrity. Of course, I'm no fan of popular music (or popular novels, or popular TV shows, etc.). But if every time I turned on the radio they were playing extreme noise, Yanni, or black metal, I'd be similarly Disturbed (ha! get it?).

So, I see IRV and RCV as a potential solution to finding compromise in our elections instead of electing people by hyper-partisan elections, then expecting them to do all the compromising after they're in the new position. My criticisms of it would obtain after a few political cycles when *all* we get are the Bidens/Clintons/Bushes and the AOCs/Yangs/Bernies have no chance. It disgusts me to think a reasonable political strategy is "play to the middle". But at this point, I think we need a little of it. How can we mitigate against it later, though? I have no idea.

Maybe there's some efficacy in slicing out types of elections (which I've already tried to do by saying "IRV and RCV", recognizing they're not quite synonymous). Maybe Congress needs IRV, whereas the Executive needs 1st past the post? Or maybe the House needs 1st-past but the Senate needs IRV and the Executive needs RCV (and the top 2 get P and VP)? I don't know. But sometimes, a little mediocrity helps us identify where our tastes really do and don't diverge.

On 5/4/20 9:00 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
>> https://rankit.vote/
>>
> thanks for bringing the topic up again. I know you have made (mildly?
> obliquely?) disparaging comments about ranked-choice voting before.
> Rather than my trying to summarize (or impute) your real intention,
> maybe you could comment on how you think ranked choice voting fits into
> the bigger picture?

--
☣ uǝlƃ

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jon zingale

Re: Ranked Choice Voting app

In reply to this post by gepr

Cody,

I'm inspired to contribute some thoughts to yours. I feel that

whatever fix is imagined for voting, we should be prepared to

adopt it for a long time. The process of testing out new voting

schemes may take a few administrative cycles and may become

vulnerable to manipulation or degradation as the concrete dries.

I can see value in putting time limits on the experiment and taking

measures to protect this experiment from tampering by any given

administration. Precedence set by changing something as foundational

as voting demands careful thought. If voting systems be allowed to

change with fashion there will be vulnerabilities introduced, perhaps

similar or worse than the exploitations we are seeing in almost every

other aspect of government. To be fair, the present voting scheme already

appears corrupt or out-of-spec from my point of view. I do think it is our responsibility to think about this problem.

Secondly, I would like to contribute some thoughts on the topic of

remote voting. Perhaps rather than solving the app based voting

issue perfectly, we could aim at having certainty for validating

votes that is better than already exists. It may be the case that

under a phone app voting system, we still end up with voters in

Florida that have been known dead for a decade. If we can assess

what the present error bars are then we can have a goal in mind.

There are certainly many truly good thoughts on cryptography

and as Neal Koblitz has pointed out in a bold non-paper paper,

one of the functions of the NSA is to act as consultants on cryptographic

practice. For our entertainment, let's imagine a collaboration between the

NSA and some large gaming company, Blizzard perhaps, where the goal is

to develop a critical application voting app. While I anticipate aggressive

objections from some friam readers, there is something worth thinking about.

A friend of mine pointed out that when classic World of Warcraft was recently

released, Blizzard was prepared to have over 500,000 simultaneous users.

These users are not making 15 one-time choices but rather orders of magnitude

more choices. These choices are handled fairly consistently, with few dropped

packets and with little lag (each of which is demanded by the online gaming

community). This suggests to me that there are industries, like the gaming industry,

that have thought very carefully and for a long time about the problems of large

scale concurrent user bases and verification of its user base. Surely the tech is

out there, but I am unsure what the next careful steps ought to be.

Cheers,

Jonathan Zingale

Steve Smith

Re: Ranked Choice Voting app

In reply to this post by cody dooderson

Cody -
> I think that ranked choice is the best bet to escape from the horrible
> two party system. That being said there is not much insentive for the
> GOP or the DNC to adopt what could be enable competition. My friend
> Greg once said both parties are basically just advertising firms, and
> I still believe it.

Great line... I have a friend who is loaded with aphorisms he attributed
to his father... a man who *should have been* by some measure a
hard-line Republican who observed:

"One party wants to take all my money and give it away to other
people...and the other party wants to take and and keep it for themselves"

Who is who is left to the reader.

- Steve

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Gary Schiltz-4

Re: Ranked Choice Voting app

In reply to this post by jon zingale

Whatever voting technology is chosen, it needs to be open source, both software and hardware.

On Mon, May 4, 2020 at 8:52 PM Jon Zingale <[hidden email]> wrote:

Cody,

I'm inspired to contribute some thoughts to yours. I feel that
whatever fix is imagined for voting, we should be prepared to
adopt it for a long time. The process of testing out new voting
schemes may take a few administrative cycles and may become
vulnerable to manipulation or degradation as the concrete dries.
I can see value in putting time limits on the experiment and taking
measures to protect this experiment from tampering by any given
administration. Precedence set by changing something as foundational
as voting demands careful thought. If voting systems be allowed to
change with fashion there will be vulnerabilities introduced, perhaps
similar or worse than the exploitations we are seeing in almost every
other aspect of government. To be fair, the present voting scheme already
appears corrupt or out-of-spec from my point of view. I do think it is our responsibility to think about this problem.

Secondly, I would like to contribute some thoughts on the topic of
remote voting. Perhaps rather than solving the app based voting
issue perfectly, we could aim at having certainty for validating
votes that is better than already exists. It may be the case that
under a phone app voting system, we still end up with voters in
Florida that have been known dead for a decade. If we can assess
what the present error bars are then we can have a goal in mind.

There are certainly many truly good thoughts on cryptography
and as Neal Koblitz has pointed out in a bold non-paper paper,
one of the functions of the NSA is to act as consultants on cryptographic
practice. For our entertainment, let's imagine a collaboration between the
NSA and some large gaming company, Blizzard perhaps, where the goal is
to develop a critical application voting app. While I anticipate aggressive
objections from some friam readers, there is something worth thinking about.
A friend of mine pointed out that when classic World of Warcraft was recently
released, Blizzard was prepared to have over 500,000 simultaneous users.
These users are not making 15 one-time choices but rather orders of magnitude
more choices. These choices are handled fairly consistently, with few dropped
packets and with little lag (each of which is demanded by the online gaming
community). This suggests to me that there are industries, like the gaming industry,
that have thought very carefully and for a long time about the problems of large
scale concurrent user bases and verification of its user base. Surely the tech is
out there, but I am unsure what the next careful steps ought to be.

Cheers,
Jonathan Zingale
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gepr

Re: Ranked Choice Voting app

In reply to this post by Gillian Densmore

Trolling gets a bad rap. I just finished this book:

Hater, by John Semley
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/586135/hater-by-john-semley/

He does a very good job in a small book placing our modern (stigmatized) troll within the larger space of contrarians. And he talks about a lot of pop culture, too (from Nu-metal to Guy Fieri to Jesse Pinkman. His pithy _wit_ gets a little annoying at times. But I definitely recommend it.

On 5/4/20 12:38 PM, Gillian Densmore wrote:
> We have a lot small "parties" that are their to basically troll. In my opinion.

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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

Gillian Densmore

Re: Ranked Choice Voting app

Huh, thanks! Kat Williams (a comedian). Has a riff about that. Basically he felt at one time if you didn't have 'haters' (trolls) because of some issue they have. You might be doing it wrong. Basically if you don't have people challenging you (even as jackasses/trolls/haters) you need to step up your game. At least that's his thinking. I got to thinking about that after mentioned that read..

On Tue, May 5, 2020 at 10:47 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:

Trolling gets a bad rap. I just finished this book:

Hater, by John Semley
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/586135/hater-by-john-semley/

He does a very good job in a small book placing our modern (stigmatized) troll within the larger space of contrarians. And he talks about a lot of pop culture, too (from Nu-metal to Guy Fieri to Jesse Pinkman. His pithy _wit_ gets a little annoying at times. But I definitely recommend it.

On 5/4/20 12:38 PM, Gillian Densmore wrote:
> We have a lot small "parties" that are their to basically troll. In my opinion.

--
☣ uǝlƃ

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Marcus G. Daniels

Re: Ranked Choice Voting app

Westworld reflects on this this season, although it is disguised as an examination of free will.

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Gillian Densmore <[hidden email]>
Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2020 at 11:56 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Ranked Choice Voting app

On Tue, May 5, 2020 at 10:47 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:

Trolling gets a bad rap. I just finished this book:

Hater, by John Semley
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/586135/hater-by-john-semley/

He does a very good job in a small book placing our modern (stigmatized) troll within the larger space of contrarians. And he talks about a lot of pop culture, too (from Nu-metal to Guy Fieri to Jesse Pinkman. His pithy _wit_ gets a little annoying at times. But I definitely recommend it.

On 5/4/20 12:38 PM, Gillian Densmore wrote:
> We have a lot small "parties" that are their to basically troll. In my opinion.

--
☣ uǝlƃ

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cody dooderson

Re: Ranked Choice Voting app

In reply to this post by Gary Schiltz-4

I recently learned that Australia has used ranked choice voting for over one hundred years, so there is some good real world data on it. It was implemented by conservatives in the early 20th century, which surprised me.

It was referenced in this talk https://youtu.be/uuXNbKglM5Q on voting systems, and how wackadoodles can win in plurality voting schemes.

On Mon, May 4, 2020, 8:26 PM Gary Schiltz <[hidden email]> wrote:

Whatever voting technology is chosen, it needs to be open source, both software and hardware.

On Mon, May 4, 2020 at 8:52 PM Jon Zingale <[hidden email]> wrote:
Cody,

I'm inspired to contribute some thoughts to yours. I feel that
whatever fix is imagined for voting, we should be prepared to
adopt it for a long time. The process of testing out new voting
schemes may take a few administrative cycles and may become
vulnerable to manipulation or degradation as the concrete dries.
I can see value in putting time limits on the experiment and taking
measures to protect this experiment from tampering by any given
administration. Precedence set by changing something as foundational
as voting demands careful thought. If voting systems be allowed to
change with fashion there will be vulnerabilities introduced, perhaps
similar or worse than the exploitations we are seeing in almost every
other aspect of government. To be fair, the present voting scheme already
appears corrupt or out-of-spec from my point of view. I do think it is our responsibility to think about this problem.

Secondly, I would like to contribute some thoughts on the topic of
remote voting. Perhaps rather than solving the app based voting
issue perfectly, we could aim at having certainty for validating
votes that is better than already exists. It may be the case that
under a phone app voting system, we still end up with voters in
Florida that have been known dead for a decade. If we can assess
what the present error bars are then we can have a goal in mind.

There are certainly many truly good thoughts on cryptography
and as Neal Koblitz has pointed out in a bold non-paper paper,
one of the functions of the NSA is to act as consultants on cryptographic
practice. For our entertainment, let's imagine a collaboration between the
NSA and some large gaming company, Blizzard perhaps, where the goal is
to develop a critical application voting app. While I anticipate aggressive
objections from some friam readers, there is something worth thinking about.
A friend of mine pointed out that when classic World of Warcraft was recently
released, Blizzard was prepared to have over 500,000 simultaneous users.
These users are not making 15 one-time choices but rather orders of magnitude
more choices. These choices are handled fairly consistently, with few dropped
packets and with little lag (each of which is demanded by the online gaming
community). This suggests to me that there are industries, like the gaming industry,
that have thought very carefully and for a long time about the problems of large
scale concurrent user bases and verification of its user base. Surely the tech is
out there, but I am unsure what the next careful steps ought to be.

Cheers,
Jonathan Zingale
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Gillian Densmore

Re: Ranked Choice Voting app

I don't think we need fancy schmancy models to see what's going on now is a mess.

On Mon, Jun 22, 2020 at 8:36 AM cody dooderson <[hidden email]> wrote:

I recently learned that Australia has used ranked choice voting for over one hundred years, so there is some good real world data on it. It was implemented by conservatives in the early 20th century, which surprised me.

It was referenced in this talk https://youtu.be/uuXNbKglM5Q on voting systems, and how wackadoodles can win in plurality voting schemes.

On Mon, May 4, 2020, 8:26 PM Gary Schiltz <[hidden email]> wrote:
Whatever voting technology is chosen, it needs to be open source, both software and hardware.

On Mon, May 4, 2020 at 8:52 PM Jon Zingale <[hidden email]> wrote:
Cody,

I'm inspired to contribute some thoughts to yours. I feel that
whatever fix is imagined for voting, we should be prepared to
adopt it for a long time. The process of testing out new voting
schemes may take a few administrative cycles and may become
vulnerable to manipulation or degradation as the concrete dries.
I can see value in putting time limits on the experiment and taking
measures to protect this experiment from tampering by any given
administration. Precedence set by changing something as foundational
as voting demands careful thought. If voting systems be allowed to
change with fashion there will be vulnerabilities introduced, perhaps
similar or worse than the exploitations we are seeing in almost every
other aspect of government. To be fair, the present voting scheme already
appears corrupt or out-of-spec from my point of view. I do think it is our responsibility to think about this problem.

Secondly, I would like to contribute some thoughts on the topic of
remote voting. Perhaps rather than solving the app based voting
issue perfectly, we could aim at having certainty for validating
votes that is better than already exists. It may be the case that
under a phone app voting system, we still end up with voters in
Florida that have been known dead for a decade. If we can assess
what the present error bars are then we can have a goal in mind.

There are certainly many truly good thoughts on cryptography
and as Neal Koblitz has pointed out in a bold non-paper paper,
one of the functions of the NSA is to act as consultants on cryptographic
practice. For our entertainment, let's imagine a collaboration between the
NSA and some large gaming company, Blizzard perhaps, where the goal is
to develop a critical application voting app. While I anticipate aggressive
objections from some friam readers, there is something worth thinking about.
A friend of mine pointed out that when classic World of Warcraft was recently
released, Blizzard was prepared to have over 500,000 simultaneous users.
These users are not making 15 one-time choices but rather orders of magnitude
more choices. These choices are handled fairly consistently, with few dropped
packets and with little lag (each of which is demanded by the online gaming
community). This suggests to me that there are industries, like the gaming industry,
that have thought very carefully and for a long time about the problems of large
scale concurrent user bases and verification of its user base. Surely the tech is
out there, but I am unsure what the next careful steps ought to be.

Cheers,
Jonathan Zingale
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cody dooderson

Re: Ranked Choice Voting app

The point is that the problem with our voting system is very subtle. It is too easily manipulatable even if every vote is counted.

Cody Smith

On Mon, Jun 22, 2020 at 8:57 AM Gillian Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

I don't think we need fancy schmancy models to see what's going on now is a mess.

On Mon, Jun 22, 2020 at 8:36 AM cody dooderson <[hidden email]> wrote:
I recently learned that Australia has used ranked choice voting for over one hundred years, so there is some good real world data on it. It was implemented by conservatives in the early 20th century, which surprised me.

It was referenced in this talk https://youtu.be/uuXNbKglM5Q on voting systems, and how wackadoodles can win in plurality voting schemes.

On Mon, May 4, 2020, 8:26 PM Gary Schiltz <[hidden email]> wrote:
Whatever voting technology is chosen, it needs to be open source, both software and hardware.

On Mon, May 4, 2020 at 8:52 PM Jon Zingale <[hidden email]> wrote:
Cody,

I'm inspired to contribute some thoughts to yours. I feel that
whatever fix is imagined for voting, we should be prepared to
adopt it for a long time. The process of testing out new voting
schemes may take a few administrative cycles and may become
vulnerable to manipulation or degradation as the concrete dries.
I can see value in putting time limits on the experiment and taking
measures to protect this experiment from tampering by any given
administration. Precedence set by changing something as foundational
as voting demands careful thought. If voting systems be allowed to
change with fashion there will be vulnerabilities introduced, perhaps
similar or worse than the exploitations we are seeing in almost every
other aspect of government. To be fair, the present voting scheme already
appears corrupt or out-of-spec from my point of view. I do think it is our responsibility to think about this problem.

Secondly, I would like to contribute some thoughts on the topic of
remote voting. Perhaps rather than solving the app based voting
issue perfectly, we could aim at having certainty for validating
votes that is better than already exists. It may be the case that
under a phone app voting system, we still end up with voters in
Florida that have been known dead for a decade. If we can assess
what the present error bars are then we can have a goal in mind.

There are certainly many truly good thoughts on cryptography
and as Neal Koblitz has pointed out in a bold non-paper paper,
one of the functions of the NSA is to act as consultants on cryptographic
practice. For our entertainment, let's imagine a collaboration between the
NSA and some large gaming company, Blizzard perhaps, where the goal is
to develop a critical application voting app. While I anticipate aggressive
objections from some friam readers, there is something worth thinking about.
A friend of mine pointed out that when classic World of Warcraft was recently
released, Blizzard was prepared to have over 500,000 simultaneous users.
These users are not making 15 one-time choices but rather orders of magnitude
more choices. These choices are handled fairly consistently, with few dropped
packets and with little lag (each of which is demanded by the online gaming
community). This suggests to me that there are industries, like the gaming industry,
that have thought very carefully and for a long time about the problems of large
scale concurrent user bases and verification of its user base. Surely the tech is
out there, but I am unsure what the next careful steps ought to be.

Cheers,
Jonathan Zingale
.-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ... .... . ...
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Gillian Densmore

Re: Ranked Choice Voting app

AAAAH!. Ok I think I understand where you are coming from. ^_^ When I get back from adulting (Joke: Am an adult? since when?)I'll watch. It my hunches are that the candidates that run and get picked for what ever position We don't get much diversity for pet projects. And that their is a lot of finger pointing. Media distortions from little things like zooming in on crowds to make them look larger then they are, to bigger things, like focusing more on particular candidates isn't helping.

And yeah having two more or less stuck platforms might also be a part of that mess.

Right now we had 3 very different candidates. But then vermot and one of the other states basically held their votes without even offering mail in votes. Much less something online. And we see what that lead to.

I didn't know Australia let you vote for more than 1 person. Isn't santa fe supposed to have that?

On Mon, Jun 22, 2020 at 9:24 AM cody dooderson <[hidden email]> wrote:

The point is that the problem with our voting system is very subtle. It is too easily manipulatable even if every vote is counted.

Cody Smith

On Mon, Jun 22, 2020 at 8:57 AM Gillian Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:
I don't think we need fancy schmancy models to see what's going on now is a mess.

On Mon, Jun 22, 2020 at 8:36 AM cody dooderson <[hidden email]> wrote:
I recently learned that Australia has used ranked choice voting for over one hundred years, so there is some good real world data on it. It was implemented by conservatives in the early 20th century, which surprised me.

It was referenced in this talk https://youtu.be/uuXNbKglM5Q on voting systems, and how wackadoodles can win in plurality voting schemes.

On Mon, May 4, 2020, 8:26 PM Gary Schiltz <[hidden email]> wrote:
Whatever voting technology is chosen, it needs to be open source, both software and hardware.

On Mon, May 4, 2020 at 8:52 PM Jon Zingale <[hidden email]> wrote:
Cody,

I'm inspired to contribute some thoughts to yours. I feel that
whatever fix is imagined for voting, we should be prepared to
adopt it for a long time. The process of testing out new voting
schemes may take a few administrative cycles and may become
vulnerable to manipulation or degradation as the concrete dries.
I can see value in putting time limits on the experiment and taking
measures to protect this experiment from tampering by any given
administration. Precedence set by changing something as foundational
as voting demands careful thought. If voting systems be allowed to
change with fashion there will be vulnerabilities introduced, perhaps
similar or worse than the exploitations we are seeing in almost every
other aspect of government. To be fair, the present voting scheme already
appears corrupt or out-of-spec from my point of view. I do think it is our responsibility to think about this problem.

Secondly, I would like to contribute some thoughts on the topic of
remote voting. Perhaps rather than solving the app based voting
issue perfectly, we could aim at having certainty for validating
votes that is better than already exists. It may be the case that
under a phone app voting system, we still end up with voters in
Florida that have been known dead for a decade. If we can assess
what the present error bars are then we can have a goal in mind.

There are certainly many truly good thoughts on cryptography
and as Neal Koblitz has pointed out in a bold non-paper paper,
one of the functions of the NSA is to act as consultants on cryptographic
practice. For our entertainment, let's imagine a collaboration between the
NSA and some large gaming company, Blizzard perhaps, where the goal is
to develop a critical application voting app. While I anticipate aggressive
objections from some friam readers, there is something worth thinking about.
A friend of mine pointed out that when classic World of Warcraft was recently
released, Blizzard was prepared to have over 500,000 simultaneous users.
These users are not making 15 one-time choices but rather orders of magnitude
more choices. These choices are handled fairly consistently, with few dropped
packets and with little lag (each of which is demanded by the online gaming
community). This suggests to me that there are industries, like the gaming industry,
that have thought very carefully and for a long time about the problems of large
scale concurrent user bases and verification of its user base. Surely the tech is
out there, but I am unsure what the next careful steps ought to be.

Cheers,
Jonathan Zingale
.-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ... .... . ...
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam
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gepr

Re: Ranked Choice Voting app

When discussing the gaming of the system, it's best to identify the *type* of RCV being used. I think the Ausies use instant-runoff, which (again, I think) is more susceptible to accidentally choosing a wacko than *purposefully* choosing your person.

On 6/22/20 8:45 AM, Gillian Densmore wrote:

> AAAAH!. Ok I think I understand where you are coming from. ^_^ When I get back from adulting (Joke: Am an adult? since when?)I'll watch. It my hunches are that the candidates that run and get picked for what ever position We don't get much diversity for pet projects. And that their is a lot of finger pointing. Media distortions from little things like zooming in on crowds to make them look larger then they are, to bigger things, like focusing more on particular candidates isn't helping.
> And yeah having two more or less stuck platforms might also be a part of that mess.
> Right now we had 3 very different candidates. But then vermot and one of the other states basically held their votes without even offering mail in votes. Much less something online. And we see what that lead to.
>
> I didn't know Australia let you vote for more than 1 person. Isn't santa fe supposed to have that?
>
>
> On Mon, Jun 22, 2020 at 9:24 AM cody dooderson <[hidden email] <mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
>
> The point is that the problem with our voting system is very subtle. It is too easily manipulatable even if every vote is counted.

--
☣ uǝlƃ

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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

cody dooderson

Re: Ranked Choice Voting app

Glen, your response made me second guess what I thought I knew. After some reading it turns out that instant runoff refers to single winner elections whereas single transferable vote refers to multi winner elections. Voting schemes are a deep pond and I am not an expert, but from what I can tell RCV schemes are preferred by the experts as the most fair system.

IMO the major problems with the USA's plurality voting scheme is vote splitting (Rubio and Kusich split the reasonable republican vote while Trump won all of the name-recognition/wackadoodle vote) and stategic voting ("A vote for the green party is a vote for trump" paradigm). Both of which are not considered problems in ranked choice voting.

Cody Smith

On Mon, Jun 22, 2020 at 9:47 AM ∄ uǝlƃ <[hidden email]> wrote:

When discussing the gaming of the system, it's best to identify the *type* of RCV being used. I think the Ausies use instant-runoff, which (again, I think) is more susceptible to accidentally choosing a wacko than *purposefully* choosing your person.

On 6/22/20 8:45 AM, Gillian Densmore wrote:
> AAAAH!. Ok I think I understand where you are coming from. ^_^ When I get back from adulting (Joke: Am an adult? since when?)I'll watch. It my hunches are that the candidates that run and get picked for what ever position We don't get much diversity for pet projects. And that their is a lot of finger pointing. Media distortions from little things like zooming in on crowds to make them look larger then they are, to bigger things, like focusing more on particular candidates isn't helping.
> And yeah having two more or less stuck platforms might also be a part of that mess.
> Right now we had 3 very different candidates. But then vermot and one of the other states basically held their votes without even offering mail in votes. Much less something online. And we see what that lead to.
>
> I didn't know Australia let you vote for more than 1 person. Isn't santa fe supposed to have that?
>
>
> On Mon, Jun 22, 2020 at 9:24 AM cody dooderson <[hidden email] <mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
>
> The point is that the problem with our voting system is very subtle. It is too easily manipulatable even if every vote is counted.
--
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