Schulze method: Difference between revisions
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{{Wikipedia}}
The '''Schulze method''' is a [[voting system]] developed by Markus Schulze that selects a single winner using votes that express preferences. The Schulze method can also be used to create a sorted list of winners. The Schulze method is also known as "Schwartz sequential dropping" (SSD), "cloneproof Schwartz sequential dropping" (CSSD), "beatpath method", "beatpath winner", "path voting", and "path winner".
If there is a candidate who is preferred over the other candidates, when [[Pairwise counting|compared]] in turn with [[pairwise matchup|each of the others]], the Schulze method guarantees that that candidate will win. Because of this property, the Schulze method is (by definition) a [[Condorcet method]]. Note that this is different from some other preference voting systems such as [[Borda count|Borda]] and [[Instant-runoff voting]], which do not make this guarantee.
Many different heuristics for the Schulze method have been proposed. The most important heuristics are the path heuristic and the Schwartz set heuristic.
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# If there are no defeats among the members of that set then they (plural in the case of a tie) win and the count ends.
# Otherwise, drop the weakest defeat among the candidates of that set. Go to 1.
To create a ranked list, simply remove the winner(s) of this procedure, and repeat it to find the 2nd place candidates, then 3rd place candidates, etc.
=== An Example ===
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The Schulze method then says to drop the weakest defeat, so we drop C > A and are left with
* A > B 72% (as C has been removed from the Schwartz set and thus eliminated, since they no longer beat or tie anyone in the set)
Therefore, A is the winner.
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Using the [[first-past-the-post]] system and some other systems, Memphis would have won the election by having the most people, even though Nashville won every simulated pairwise election outright. Using [[Instant-runoff voting]] in this example would result in Knoxville winning, even though more people preferred Nashville over Knoxville.
== Satisfied
The Schulze method satisfies the following criteria:
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# [[Summability criterion]]
# [[Strategic nomination|Independence of clones]]
# [[
#[[Independence of Smith-dominated Alternatives]]
The Schulze method violates the following criteria:
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The Schulze method was developed by Markus Schulze in 1997. The first time that the Schulze method was discussed in a public mailing list was in 1998 [http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/1998-July/001856.html] [http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/1998-August/001958.html] [http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/1998-August/002044.html] [http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/1998-September/002055.html] [http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/1998-November/002771.html]. In the following years, the Schulze method has been adopted e.g. by "Software in the Public Interest" (2003), Debian (2003), Gentoo (2005), TopCoder (2005), and "Sender Policy Framework" (2005). The first books on the Schulze method were written by Tideman (2006) and by Stahl and Johnson (2007).
== Computational complexity ==
Using the Floyd-Warshall algorithm, determining the winner (or the order of finish of all candidates) takes <math>O(c^3)</math> time, where <math>c</math> is the number of candidates.
Unlike [[Ranked pairs]], determining the Schulze winner is in the NL complexity class. This indicates that it is easier to parallelize than [[Ranked pairs]] (unless NL=P).<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Csar|first=Theresa|last2=Lackner|first2=Martin|last3=Pichler|first3=Reinhard|date=2018-07|title=Computing the Schulze Method for Large-Scale Preference Data Sets|url=https://www.ijcai.org/proceedings/2018/25|journal=Proceedings of the Twenty-Seventh International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence|language=en|location=Stockholm, Sweden|publisher=International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence Organization|pages=180–187|doi=10.24963/ijcai.2018/25|isbn=978-0-9992411-2-7}}</ref>
Because Schulze, like [[Ranked Pairs]], is equivalent to [[Minimax]] when there are 3 or fewer candidates with no pairwise ties, and passes [[Independence of Smith-dominated Alternatives]], it is possible to eliminate all candidates not in the Smith set before running Schulze and get the same result, potentially making computation easier, and when the Smith set has 3 or fewer members with no pairwise ties between them, Minimax can then be used instead after eliminating non-Smith candidates to find the Schulze winner.
== Notes ==
The Schulze ranking is a [[Smith set ranking]]. This is because every candidate in the n-th Smith set will have a beatpath to all candidates in lower Smith sets (because they directly pairwise beat them), but all candidates in lower Smith sets will have no beatpath back to the candidates in the n-th Smith set, because by definition the candidates in the lower Smith sets are pairwise beaten by all candidates in higher Smith sets, and can thus only pairwise beat fellow members of lower Smith sets, who are also all pairwise beaten by all candidates in the n-th Smith set. Therefore, the strength of the path for candidates in the n-th Smith set to candidates in lower Smith sets is always stronger than the other way around. The same logic demonstrates why all candidates in the n-th Smith set will be ranked lower than all candidates in higher Smith sets.
=== Smith set-based variant ===
[[File:Smith based Schulze example.png|thumb|An example of the Smith set-based variation of the Schulze method.]]
A possible variation of Schulze (caution: not proposed, endorsed, or seriously analyzed by Markus Schulze) which is only [[Smith-efficient]] and not Schwartz-efficient (see the image to the right for an example) can be described as "Iteratively repeat the following two steps until there are no more pairwise defeats, at which point all of the remaining candidates are tied to win: 1) Eliminate all candidates not in the [[Smith set]], and then 2) turn the weakest pairwise defeat into a [[pairwise beat|pairwise victory]] for both candidates in the matchup." This can be argued to be simpler than regular Schulze, since the Smith set is easier to understand than the Schwartz set. It will return the same result as regular Schulze when there are no pairwise ties between any members of the Smith set. This variation could be called the '''cloneproof Smith sequential dropping method''' (though when dropping defeats, they are "flipped" to victories for both candidates in the matchup, rather than turned into a pairwise tie). It may be possible when using this variation to pretend a particular pairwise matchup simply didn't happen, rather than to say that both candidates in the matchup got a pairwise victory, when dropping defeats.
Example (taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MarkusSchulze/Wikimedia_Board_of_Trustees_elections,_2008):
In the Wikimedia Board of Trustees 2008 election, a [[Condorcet ranking]] of candidates existed from 1st to 5th place, and from 10th place to 15th place, but there was a [[Condorcet cycle]] from 6th place to 9th. The cycle can be seen as:
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center"
|-
!!![[m:User:Cimon Avaro|JH]]!![[m:User:Ryan Postlethwaite|RP]]!![[m:User:Sarcasticidealist|SS]]!![[m:User:Eclecticology|RS]]
|-
![[m:User:Cimon Avaro|Jussi-Ville Heiskanen]]
| ||bgcolor=#90ff90|841||bgcolor=#90ff90|798||bgcolor=#ff9090|737
|-
![[m:User:Ryan Postlethwaite|Ryan Postlethwaite]]
|bgcolor=#ff9090|770|| ||bgcolor=#90ff90|755||bgcolor=#90ff90|797
|-
![[m:User:Sarcasticidealist|Steve Smith]]
|bgcolor=#ff9090|750||bgcolor=#ff9090|744|| ||bgcolor=#90ff90|778
|-
![[m:User:Eclecticology|Ray Saintonge]]
|bgcolor=#90ff90|745||bgcolor=#ff9090|769||bgcolor=#ff9090|738||
|-
|}
To start off with, when looking at only these candidates, all of them are in the Smith set (because there is a [[beatpath]] cycle of SS>RS>JH>RP>SS).
If using winning votes to calculate defeat strength, then the defeats from weakest to strongest were: RS>JH:745, RP>SS:755, SS>RS:778, RP>RS:797, JH>SS:798, JH>RP:841.
The Smith set-based variant of Schulze (Smith-Schulze) would take the weakest defeat, RS>JH, and instead treat it as a victory for both RS and JH in that matchup. So now the new table is:
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center"
|-
!!![[m:User:Cimon Avaro|JH]]!![[m:User:Ryan Postlethwaite|RP]]!![[m:User:Sarcasticidealist|SS]]!![[m:User:Eclecticology|RS]]
|-
![[m:User:Cimon Avaro|Jussi-Ville Heiskanen]]
| ||bgcolor=#90ff90|841||bgcolor=#90ff90|798||bgcolor=#90ff90|737
|-
![[m:User:Ryan Postlethwaite|Ryan Postlethwaite]]
|bgcolor=#ff9090|770|| ||bgcolor=#90ff90|755||bgcolor=#90ff90|797
|-
![[m:User:Sarcasticidealist|Steve Smith]]
|bgcolor=#ff9090|750||bgcolor=#ff9090|744|| ||bgcolor=#90ff90|778
|-
![[m:User:Eclecticology|Ray Saintonge]]
|bgcolor=#90ff90|745||bgcolor=#ff9090|769||bgcolor=#ff9090|738||
|-
|}
The new Smith set is simply JH, since they pairwise beat all other candidates, so they are ranked uniquely highest among all of these candidates, and are thus put in 6th place in the overall Schulze ranking. To find the ranking of the remaining candidates, we remove JH, at which point the table becomes:
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center"
|-
!!![[m:User:Ryan Postlethwaite|RP]]!![[m:User:Sarcasticidealist|SS]]!![[m:User:Eclecticology|RS]]
|-
![[m:User:Ryan Postlethwaite|Ryan Postlethwaite]]
|| ||bgcolor=#90ff90|755||bgcolor=#90ff90|797
|-
![[m:User:Sarcasticidealist|Steve Smith]]
|||bgcolor=#ff9090|744|| ||bgcolor=#90ff90|778
|-
![[m:User:Eclecticology|Ray Saintonge]]
|||bgcolor=#ff9090|769||bgcolor=#ff9090|738
|-
|}
Here, there is a clear [[Condorcet ranking]] of these candidates of RP>SS>RS. Therefore, the Schulze ranking fills in the ranking from 6th place to 9th place as JH>RP>SS>RS.
== Use of the Schulze method ==
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=== Wikimedia Foundation, 2008 ===
{{Merge to|Category:Schulze method elections|date=August 2019}}
In June 2008, the Wikimedia Foundation used the Schulze method for the election to its Board of Trustees: One vacant seat had to be filled. There were 15 candidates, about 26,000 eligible voters, and 3,019 valid ballots.
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* [http://m-schulze.9mail.de/serie3_9-10.pdf Schulze-Methode] by the University of Stuttgart
===
:''<span id="Advocacy">formerly "Advocacy"</span>''
This section contains various public discussions about the Schulze method.
==== 2020 ====
* [https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/gwik8c/what_are_the_key_disadvantages_of_the_schulze/ "What are the key disadvantages of the Schulze method?" (2020-06-04)] - a discussion started on [[EndFPTP]] regarding the possible disadvantages of Schulze's method.
==== 2019 and earlier ====
<!-- this section contains a lot of links; please try to keep it organized by the author's last name. -->
* [http://fc.antioch.edu/~james_green-armytage/vm/survey.htm#beatpath Voting Methods Survey] by James Green-Armytage
* [https://www.
* [http://accuratedemocracy.com/voting_rules.htm Accurate Democracy] by Rob Loring
* [http://rangevoting.org/SchulzeExplan.html Schulze beatpaths method] by Warren D. Smith
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* [http://seehuhn.de/comp/vote.html The Debian Voting System] by Jochen Voss
* [http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/ election-methods: a mailing list containing technical discussions about election methods]
* [https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/15637/why-is-schulze-the-most-popular-condorcet-election-method "Why is Schulze the most popular Condorcet election method?"] ''[[politics.stackexchange.com]]'' 2017-02-14
=== Research papers ===
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[[Category:Single-winner voting methods]]
[[Category:Smith-efficient Condorcet methods]]
[[Category:Defeat-dropping Condorcet methods]]
[[Category:Monotonic_electoral_systems]]
[[Category:Ranked voting methods]]
[[Category:Clone-independent electoral systems]]
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