Election Data

CLAY S clay at brokenladder.com
Mon Jul 28 06:56:31 UTC 2008


On Sun, Jul 27, 2008 at 23:13, Nigel Jones <dev at nigelj.com> wrote:

> a) Assuming you are going to do a similar publication to that of the Haiku
> thing, then a very simple answer, if your trying to prove a point, then your
> not doing a very good job 'and a lot of "abstentions." Problem is, we can't
> tell abstentions from 0's. (There are no 0's, so that's my assessment.)'
> this exactly how any data you'd get from Fedora Project would be (0 =
> abstain OR no immediate preference)


I'm surprised your interface doesn't have a clear distinction between a zero
and an abstention.  But I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.  Not
being able to tell 0's from abstentions is an "inadequacy" in the data.  But
there is still lots of valuable information in that data set.  Even if we do
not know for certain that a ballot with _no_ intermediate scores was
intentionally strategically exaggerated, it is still plausible that it is,
and still quite relevant to election researchers.

, where _I'VE_ voted zero in the ballots, I would have voted zero even if I
> did have a no preference option.


Then the data set would have registered your zero, which is precisely what
we'd want.  Again I'm not sure what your point is.

So my concern here is:
> You can't compare apples with oranges and any attempt to do so would offend
> me as a user of Fedora


Can you put that into a formal mathematical statement?  Telling us that we
can't compare "apples and oranges" and that it offends you is most
uninformative.

it also makes me disregard the rest of the 'study' as phony because it gives
> no statistical burden of proof


It's not phone.  It's real data.  And please tell me, in as formal language
as possible, what a "statistical burden of proof" is.  Could you be talking
about a confidence interval perhaps?

b) It's a bit steep to just come along and ask for _complete_ voting records
> (anonymous or not), why haven't you asked for a simple random sample (SRS) I
> would have thought of any such request much more favourably (in light of
> point a) than not.


I specifically raised that option in one of the earliest emails in this
thread.  I put it something like, "a random subset of the ballots".


> c) There is the privacy of the votes, I make my vote in confidence (unless
> I'm told beforehand) that my choices are between me and no one else, and
> will ONLY be seen for purposes of tallying the votes.  Why should we treat
> our users votes any differently than a responsible government (i.e. not
> Zimbabwe).  There is _no_ reason why, and any attempt to change that I'd
> find disgraceful.


With all due respect, this seems irrational to me if the data is anonymous,
especially if a random sample is provided.  If even a voter _himself_ cannot
tell that a particular ballot in the data set is his, clearly his privacy
has not been violated.

Although as I already said, I'd be more than happy to wait until future
elections have a notice that the anonymized ballot data will be used for
transparency/research.


> Oh and please none of the "Fedora is open" yada-yada because I know that,
> I've known that for ages, but there is no way anyone can say everything is
> 100% transparent because the Board, been effectively a governing body of
> Fedora holds meetings is private, they release the aggregate information out
> (what they can) but they can't release everything...  Why?  Because there
> are just some things that _shouldn't_ be aired in the public arena, what can
> be is kept for town-hall meetings.


Agreed.  Can you think of any sound reasons the ballot data shouldn't be
aired in public?

My thoughts for the Board's consideration:
> - Why should a vote in a Fedora election be any different to that of nearly
> any governing body (heck, Public Companies don't release non-aggregate vote
> data that I've seen)?


That's a logical fallacy - an appeal to tradition/popularity.  If the
evidence says that disclosing the anonymized data is harmless and even has
some benefits, then it is _those companies_ who are doing it wrong, and so
citing them as an example doesn't bolster your case.

- Please consider future implications of such a move (to release data)


Are there some negative implications you can think of?

- Can we _please_ create some sort of policy to protect the voting data (at
> the very least as a whole) in retrospect and for the future?


Why not just create a policy of telling the voters beforehand that the data
will be made public but anonymous?


> On another note, it should be made clear, that even I have _never_ seen
> individual vote information (anonymously or associated), there has been no
> reason to (yes I do check for invalid votes, but none have been displayed
> and the queries have always been designed to avoid showing valid data).


Again I fail to see what point you're making.


> Yes, and people vote with the knowledge that such releases happen, I
> honestly don't see anything wrong from there perspective.  As for
> immediately discounting as 'worse', I don't see how you can claim that, it's
> worked fairly well for them and I'm all for what works.


You have no way of knowing that "it's worked fairly well for them", since
you can't read the voters' minds to calculate the Bayesian regret they
experienced through it.  That can only be gotten via computer simulation,
where you _can_ read the voters' minds.

http://rangevoting.org/BayRegDum.html

Some sample B.R. figures for Condorcet and scoring:

Magically elect optimum winner  100.00%   Range (honest voters)
96.71%  Condorcet-LR (honest voters) 85.19%  Range & Approval
(strategic exaggerating voters) 78.99%  Condorcet-LR (strategic
exaggerating voters) 42.56%  Elect random winner 0.00%
-clay
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