Rankings with disapproval (was Re: Lesser of 2 evils)

[Steve Eppley]

DEMOREP1 wrote:

>For new folk I repeat that the obvious remedy for removing evil
>candidates (greater or lesser) in executive and judicial elections
>is a disapproval vote (i.e. give such candidates a zero (0) vote).

Do we have any new folk here?  I wish...   :-)

I don't consider voting 0 to be the best way to express disapproval,
so to me this way isn't "obvious."  The problem is that if a voter
must use 0 for all the disapproved choices, then the voter isn't
allowed to distinguish which disapproved candidates are worse than
other disapproved candidates.  They all will appear to be equally
disapproved, so this method gags the voter's full expression.

Here's are two ways I think are superior: 

1. (Ranked ballots)  Let each voter insert a NOTB (None of the Below)
choice in his/her rankings.  Any candidate liked less than NOTB is
considered disapproved by this voter.  
Example:  the ballot {A>B>C > NOTB > D>E} implies that the voter 
disapproves of D and E.  

Note: there are several reasonable ways to tally this.  Demorep
suggests that if a strict majority of voters disapproves a candidate
then this candidate is disqualified.  It would also be reasonable to
ignore whether there's a strict majority disapproving: disqualify a
candidate if it loses pairwise to NOTB.  (Yes, this can happen 
without a strict majority, if voters are allowed to rank NOTB
*equally* with other candidates.  A truncated ballot which omits
NOTB as well as some candidates does this.)  A third reasonable way
to tally would be to treat NOTB like any other candidate: hold a new
election if the NOTB choice is the winner.

2. (Rated ballots) Any candidate rated below the scale's midpoint is 
considered disapproved.  If, for example, the scale is -100 to +100 
then any negative score implies disapproval.

-snip-
>The underlying tone in many single winner examples continues to
>give legislative agenda attributes to executive office elections
>which properly belong in legislative system discussions. 

What do you mean by this?  Which attributes don't belong?

---Steve     (Steve Eppley    seppley at alumni.caltech.edu)