Taming the WhaleQuestions learned about online voting and real people

Sylvain Bouveret, Renaud Blanch, Nikos Karanikolas, Corentin CosLIG, Université Grenoble-Alpes

Dagstuhl Seminar

Schloß Dagstuhl, June the 10th, 2015

Online voting

An online voting system

Whale3 – Which alternative is elected (3rd version)http://whale3.noiraudes.net/

Some other online voting resources / systems / platforms:http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Electowidget (PHP library)

http://www.condorcet.vote/ (platform + PHP library)

https://vote.debian.org/~secretary/devotee.git/ (Debian votingsystem)

http://votedevaleur.org/

https://pnyx.dss.in.tum.de/

2 / 15Taming the Whale

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Online voting

An online voting system

Whale3 – Which alternative is elected (3rd version)http://whale3.noiraudes.net/

Some other online voting resources / systems / platforms:http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Electowidget (PHP library)

http://www.condorcet.vote/ (platform + PHP library)

https://vote.debian.org/~secretary/devotee.git/ (Debian votingsystem)

http://votedevaleur.org/

https://pnyx.dss.in.tum.de/

2 / 15Taming the Whale

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Online voting

Let’s vote

A food poll:We have to decide which country has the best food in the universe...

http://whale3.noiraudes.net/whale3/vote.do?id=1

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Online voting

And the winner is...

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Data visualization

Challenge #1

What is the intuition behind voting rules?

Different voting rules ⇒ different winners?

Can (interactive) data visualization techniques help understandingwhat is going on?

Back to the food poll...http://whale3.noiraudes.net/whale3/dataViz.do?id=1

5 / 15Taming the Whale

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Data visualization

Challenge #1

What is the intuition behind voting rules?

Different voting rules ⇒ different winners?

Can (interactive) data visualization techniques help understandingwhat is going on?

Back to the food poll...http://whale3.noiraudes.net/whale3/dataViz.do?id=1

5 / 15Taming the Whale

N

Data visualization

Challenge #1

What is the intuition behind voting rules?

Different voting rules ⇒ different winners?

Can (interactive) data visualization techniques help understandingwhat is going on?

Back to the food poll...http://whale3.noiraudes.net/whale3/dataViz.do?id=1

5 / 15Taming the Whale

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Data visualization

About Condorcet methods

This is the majority graph...

FC

FGTM

PF

SW SL

LR

DKTG

SR

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Data visualization

Better representations?

FC

FG

TM

PF

SW

SL

LR

DK

TG

SR

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Data visualization

Better representations?

FC

FG

TM

PF

SW

SL

LR

DK

TG

SR

FC

FG TM

SW PF

LRSL

DK

TG

SR

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Data visualization

About k-approval voting

Some preliminary ideas about k-approval voting:http://www.noiraudes.net/visu/approval_histo.html

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Data visualization

Voting and dataviz

Still work in progress (not so much progress done so far...)

Main difficulty here: how to validate the approaches?

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Data visualization

Voting and dataviz

Still work in progress (not so much progress done so far...)

Main difficulty here: how to validate the approaches?

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Input preferences

The best poster award

SAGEO 2014French Conference on Geomatics

Election of the best poster award:12 posters to rank;

About 120 participants;

Anonymous sealed ballots.

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Input preferences

The best poster award

SAGEO 2014French Conference on Geomatics

Election of the best poster award:12 posters to rank;

About 120 participants;

Anonymous sealed ballots.

Prix du meilleur poster Sageo 2014

http://whale3.noiraudes.net/whale3/vote.do?id=35

Certificat (Participant Sageo #109) :

pcbrmnn46j1tvio2

• Poster A. Intérêt de deux approches géomatiques (SIG et LiDAR terrestre) pour la détermination de champsde contraintes. Cas du pluton granitique de Malsburg (Forêt Noire, Allemagne) - Séverine Cornillon, GhislainTrullenque, Sébastien Potel, Anne Combaud, Andreas Henk, Dennis Laux

• Poster B. Détermination des potentialités écologiques urbaines à l’aide d’images THRS Pléiades - PaulineCrombette, Sébastien Le Corre, Claire Tinel

• Poster C. Apport du LiDAR dans l’évaluation de l’aléa éboulement rocheux et des processus de rupture - Julied’Amato, Antoine Guerin, Didier Hantz, Michel Jaboyedoff

• Poster D. Cartographie interactive de matrices Origines/Destinations - Étienne Côme, Mohamed El Mahrsi,Latifa Oukhellou

• Poster E. Évaluer des modes de représentation cartographique de l’incertitude - Geoffrey Seccia, Claire Cunty,élisabeth Chesneau, Bilal Berjawi, Franck Favetta

• Poster F. Représentation spatiale du bien-être par l’application des critères de l’OCDE à une échelle infracom-munale - Kenji Fujiki, Florent Renard

• Poster G. Constitution d’une base de données sur les stations de sports d’hiver : construction d’une informationspatiale de référence - Hugues François, Frédéric Bray, Jean-Baptiste Barré, Gabriel Fablet, EmmanuelleGeorge-Marcelpoil

• Poster H. Apport de la géomatique pour l’analyse et la représentation du risque caniculaire - Laura Pinson,Anne Ruas

• Poster I. Spatial framework for uncertainty propagation - Jean-Marc Tacnet, Guillaume Dupouy, FranckBourrier, Dominique Laigle, Laure Vidaud, Éric Maldonado

• Poster J.Analyses des préférences spatiales de la faune à partir de différentes sources de données géographiques- Laurence Jolivet, Marianne Cohen, Anne Ruas

• Poster K. Apports des colliers GPS en écologie : comparaison des mouvements et de la sélection de l’habitatchez 2 ongulés de montagne, le chamois et le mouflon - Antoine Duparc, Pascal Marchand, Mathieu Garel,Dominique Dubray, Jean-Michel Jullien, Daniel Maillard, Anne Loison

• Poster L. Analyse des impacts de la forme de la croissance urbaine sur la qualité de l’air - Julie Prud’homme,Isabelle Coll, Vincent Viguié, Nicolas Coulombel

10 / 15Taming the Whale

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Input preferences

The best poster award

SAGEO 2014French Conference on Geomatics

Election of the best poster award:12 posters to rank;

About 120 participants;

Anonymous sealed ballots.

Prix du meilleur poster Sageo 2014

http://whale3.noiraudes.net/whale3/vote.do?id=35

Certificat (Participant Sageo #109) :

pcbrmnn46j1tvio2

• Poster A. Intérêt de deux approches géomatiques (SIG et LiDAR terrestre) pour la détermination de champsde contraintes. Cas du pluton granitique de Malsburg (Forêt Noire, Allemagne) - Séverine Cornillon, GhislainTrullenque, Sébastien Potel, Anne Combaud, Andreas Henk, Dennis Laux

• Poster B. Détermination des potentialités écologiques urbaines à l’aide d’images THRS Pléiades - PaulineCrombette, Sébastien Le Corre, Claire Tinel

• Poster C. Apport du LiDAR dans l’évaluation de l’aléa éboulement rocheux et des processus de rupture - Julied’Amato, Antoine Guerin, Didier Hantz, Michel Jaboyedoff

• Poster D. Cartographie interactive de matrices Origines/Destinations - Étienne Côme, Mohamed El Mahrsi,Latifa Oukhellou

• Poster E. Évaluer des modes de représentation cartographique de l’incertitude - Geoffrey Seccia, Claire Cunty,élisabeth Chesneau, Bilal Berjawi, Franck Favetta

• Poster F. Représentation spatiale du bien-être par l’application des critères de l’OCDE à une échelle infracom-munale - Kenji Fujiki, Florent Renard

• Poster G. Constitution d’une base de données sur les stations de sports d’hiver : construction d’une informationspatiale de référence - Hugues François, Frédéric Bray, Jean-Baptiste Barré, Gabriel Fablet, EmmanuelleGeorge-Marcelpoil

• Poster H. Apport de la géomatique pour l’analyse et la représentation du risque caniculaire - Laura Pinson,Anne Ruas

• Poster I. Spatial framework for uncertainty propagation - Jean-Marc Tacnet, Guillaume Dupouy, FranckBourrier, Dominique Laigle, Laure Vidaud, Éric Maldonado

• Poster J.Analyses des préférences spatiales de la faune à partir de différentes sources de données géographiques- Laurence Jolivet, Marianne Cohen, Anne Ruas

• Poster K. Apports des colliers GPS en écologie : comparaison des mouvements et de la sélection de l’habitatchez 2 ongulés de montagne, le chamois et le mouflon - Antoine Duparc, Pascal Marchand, Mathieu Garel,Dominique Dubray, Jean-Michel Jullien, Daniel Maillard, Anne Loison

• Poster L. Analyse des impacts de la forme de la croissance urbaine sur la qualité de l’air - Julie Prud’homme,Isabelle Coll, Vincent Viguié, Nicolas Coulombel

http://whale3.noiraudes.net/whale3/poll.do?id=3510 / 15

Taming the WhaleN

Input preferences

Feedback and lessons learned

Feedback (after some discussions with random participants):

98.4% of the participants found tedious to enter a 16-digit code to log in

Most participants were OK with ranking posters

However, they felt uncomfortable having to rank all the candidates

11 / 15Taming the Whale

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Input preferences

Feedback and lessons learned

Feedback (after some discussions with random participants):98.4% of the participants found tedious to enter a 16-digit code to log in

Most participants were OK with ranking posters

However, they felt uncomfortable having to rank all the candidates

11 / 15Taming the Whale

N

Input preferences

Feedback and lessons learned

Feedback (after some discussions with random participants):98.4% of the participants found tedious to enter a 16-digit code to log in

Most participants were OK with ranking posters

However, they felt uncomfortable having to rank all the candidates

11 / 15Taming the Whale

N

Input preferences

Feedback and lessons learned

Feedback (after some discussions with random participants):98.4% of the participants found tedious to enter a 16-digit code to log in

Most participants were OK with ranking posters

However, they felt uncomfortable having to rank all the candidates

11 / 15Taming the Whale

N

Input preferences

Feedback and lessons learned

Feedback (after some discussions with random participants):98.4% of the participants found tedious to enter a 16-digit code to log in

Most participants were OK with ranking posters

However, they felt uncomfortable having to rank all the candidates

Let’s have a look at the results:http://whale3.noiraudes.net/whale3/dataViz.do?id=35

11 / 15Taming the Whale

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Input preferences

Challenge #2

We need voting systems that are able to take into account incompletepreferences.

How to take non-ranked candidates into account?

Election of the best poster: non-ranked ≈ bad candidates

Another example:http://whale3.noiraudes.net/whale3/poll.do?id=41Here, obviously, non-ranked means “no information about it”

12 / 15Taming the Whale

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Input preferences

Challenge #2

We need voting systems that are able to take into account incompletepreferences.

How to take non-ranked candidates into account?

Election of the best poster: non-ranked ≈ bad candidates

Another example:http://whale3.noiraudes.net/whale3/poll.do?id=41Here, obviously, non-ranked means “no information about it”

12 / 15Taming the Whale

N

Input preferences

Challenge #2

We need voting systems that are able to take into account incompletepreferences.

How to take non-ranked candidates into account?

Election of the best poster: non-ranked ≈ bad candidates

Another example:http://whale3.noiraudes.net/whale3/poll.do?id=41Here, obviously, non-ranked means “no information about it”

12 / 15Taming the Whale

N

Input preferences

Challenge #2

We need voting systems that are able to take into account incompletepreferences.

How to take non-ranked candidates into account?

Election of the best poster: non-ranked ≈ bad candidates

Another example:http://whale3.noiraudes.net/whale3/poll.do?id=41

Here, obviously, non-ranked means “no information about it”

12 / 15Taming the Whale

N

Input preferences

Challenge #2

We need voting systems that are able to take into account incompletepreferences.

How to take non-ranked candidates into account?

Election of the best poster: non-ranked ≈ bad candidates

Another example:http://whale3.noiraudes.net/whale3/poll.do?id=41Here, obviously, non-ranked means “no information about it”

12 / 15Taming the Whale

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Combinatorial voting

Combinatorial domains everywhere

A DoodleR©poll about participating to the lab seminar days...

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Combinatorial voting

Combinatorial domains everywhere

A DoodleR©poll about participating to the lab seminar days...

13 / 15Taming the Whale

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Combinatorial voting

Combinatorial domains everywhere

A DoodleR©poll about participating to the lab seminar days...

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Combinatorial voting

Challenge #3

Voting and combinatorial domains:constraints restricting the set of admissible combinations

preferential dependencies between issues

multiple polls in parallel...

How to handle this combinatorial aspects in the context of voting?

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Combinatorial voting

Challenge #3

Voting and combinatorial domains:constraints restricting the set of admissible combinations

preferential dependencies between issues

multiple polls in parallel...

How to handle this combinatorial aspects in the context of voting?

14 / 15Taming the Whale

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Conclusion

Take-away message

Online voting with real people is not straightforward...

Using data visualization to help people understanding what is going onand making informed decisions?

Dealing with incompleteness?

Dealing with dependent issues?

Feel free to feed the Whale (creating polls, voting...).

If you want to play with Whale’s data:Use the machine-friendly (JSON) format of the pollshttp://whale3.noiraudes.net/whale3/poll.do-json?id=1

15 / 15Taming the Whale

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Conclusion

Take-away message

Online voting with real people is not straightforward...

Using data visualization to help people understanding what is going onand making informed decisions?

Dealing with incompleteness?

Dealing with dependent issues?

Feel free to feed the Whale (creating polls, voting...).

If you want to play with Whale’s data:Use the machine-friendly (JSON) format of the pollshttp://whale3.noiraudes.net/whale3/poll.do-json?id=1

15 / 15Taming the Whale

N