[liberationtech] EveryVote Prototype / Advice for Knight Foundation Prototype Grant Applicant?

Thu Jan 30 20:20:39 PST 2014

Hi
    Thanks Chris,
        for chiming in here.

    Social Choice theory has its challenges....   especially in the past,
as some more leading, (yet obstinate) social welfare theorists apperently
were more interested in maintaining the status quo of "true democracy is
impossible" ...
I.e. by avoiding the topic of game theory...its possible to sustain your
prestige high up in ivory tower..   Thankfully the students down bellow
seem to be on more solid footing...and much progress is currently underway
in how we might better understand the nature of the Social Choice Function
design problem...

    Thanks Chris for your clarifying example..!
For those interested..  you might want to check out our introductory Social
Choice paper <http://www.votingmatters.org.uk/ISSUE27/I27P1.pdf>, in
particular, in Section 7 where Joey and I point out that there is an
idealized Cardinal Ranked Choice function that satisfies *ALL of Arrow's
desirable properties*....   If one thinks about it a little bit futher...
the key insight here, it that it is the introduction as a limitation on a
voter's influence authority that utlimatly brings with it the mutual
exclusion associated with Dr. Arrows result....   So while we are
appreciative for the encouraging style found at the end of Prof. Arrows
Nobel lecture<http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/1972/arrow-lecture.html>.
  It is our view, that the foundations of Game theory developed by Von
Numan and Morgenstern<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Games_and_Economic_Behavior>
will
need to be more properly acknowledged.

   Thanks to all, including Dr. Arrow who have helped to make this progess
possible...

   All the best
      -Peter

On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 7:44 PM, Chris Csikszentmihalyi
<robotic at gmail.com>wrote:

> Mitch,
>
> Echoing Peter, there's a lot of ink spilled about various preferential
> voting systems, including rank, multi-stage, etc.  Benjamin Mako Hill, who
> may well be on this list and many of you probably know, did a project in my
> research group at MIT to develop both a preferential voting library and an
> example app called selectricity (currently unmaintained).
> http://rubyvote.rubyforge.org/
> https://gitorious.org/selectricity
>
> What was great about Selectricity was that one could choose from about
> half a dozen election methods, including plurality, Condorcet, Schultze,
> etc., but also see what the election would have resulted in if another
> method had been used.  Selectricity was used by a variety of unions,
> student groups, etc. to do board votes, etc.  One election for the board of
> Students for Free Culture was a great example, in that the Schultze method
> (also used by Debian) was chosen, and resulted in a completely different
> set of board members being elected than plurality had been used.
>
> The shorthand we used to describe its difference from plurality:  10
> people want to go to lunch.  Half really prefer Szechuan food, and hate
> Northern Italian cuisine.  Half crave Italian the most but hate Szechuan.
>  But all of them would choose Thai food for their second choice, and really
> like it a lot.  In plurality voting, _no one would ever eat Thai_.
>
> Anyway, feel free to look at the code bases -- I think riseup used
> rubyvote in one of their projects? -- and note: it was developed in part
> with Knight Foundation funding!
>
> Chris.
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 7:14 PM, Peter Lindener <lindener.peter at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Hi
>>     Mitch-
>>
>>     I went to your sight's URL and git hub repository....
>>
>>    I did not dive into your web sight's code....  But I'm wondering if
>> there is any consideration by way of the algebraic dependencys of Von
>> Neumann and Morgenstern expected utility theorem,<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann%E2%80%93Morgenstern_utility_theorem> it can be proven that a well formed Cardinal Ranked Choice voting system
>> is nessisary for all voter's to be consistently represented over the full
>> space of potential Social Decsion outcomes.
>>
>>    Does your web sight utilize this kind of Ranked Choice voter
>> prioritized preference ballot?....   If not, how might your system in any
>> real sense take into account every voters secondary preferences if they
>> happen not to win there first?
>>
>>    There is more to the Social Decision Systems problem, but lets start
>> with the basics....   without a Social Choice Function's having access to
>> the entire Cardianl ranked choice preference priorities of each and every
>> voter, it would be impossible for a voting function to consistently
>> represent each voter by attempting to maximize the expected personal
>> utility of each and every voter over the probability space of all possible
>> outcomes...
>>
>>    What does it mean when you use the phrase "EveryVote" ?
>>
>>     -Peter
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 5:39 PM, Mitch Downey <mitch at everyvote.org>wrote:
>>
>>> Hi liberationtech,
>>>
>>> I'm applying for the Knight Prototype Fund, and I'm new to this stuff.
>>> Is there anyone here with grant experience who can offer some advice? The
>>> application is due tomorrow, January 31 before midnight. Even if you send
>>> advice for the project after the deadline, we'd appreciate the input.
>>>
>>> We're requesting funding to finish building the MVP of the open source
>>> (AGPLv3) EveryVote election and townhall meeting platform. Click the link
>>> below to check out how EveryVote could help increase voter turnout, connect
>>> constituents to representatives and candidates, and facilitate debate
>>> online.
>>>
>>> EveryVote Prototype: everyvote.org/prototype
>>>
>>> Our intended audience for the Spring 2014 MVP is university student
>>> organization elections, such as Student Governments, Campus Activities
>>> Boards, Fraternity Councils, Homecoming King and Queen, and any other
>>> organization with elections. EveryVote group pages have to be easy enough
>>> that the Election Commissioners of the student organizations can
>>> comfortably manage the pages themselves.
>>>
>>> Also, EveryVote is dedicated to using international open government data
>>> standards, and building its software with federation to maximize the
>>> freedom and convenience of users, and also so EveryVote itself cannot form
>>> a monopoly over access to public data or public data tools. We'd also like
>>> to help educate university students about the value and challenges of open
>>> data standards and network federation.
>>>
>>> Please let us know if you have any questions, and thank you for your
>>> consideration.
>>>
>>> Mitch Downey
>>> contactus {at} everyvote [dot] org
>>>
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>>
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> Christopher Csikszentmihályi
> Director, Rootio Project
> robotic at gmail.com
>  edgyproduct.tumblr.com
>
> --
> Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable on Google. Violations
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