[EM] Approval for Tom

Martin Harper mcnh2 at cam.ac.uk
Wed Apr 4 09:47:53 PDT 2001


Approval for Tom, and others who reckon one-man-one-vote is solely referring to
how an invisible genie moves your vote around, and is absolutely sacred - I call
it "Instant Approval Poll and Plurality Voting".

1) collect approval votes. This is no worst for 1-man-1-vote than IRV collecting
preferences.

2) do a 'poll' with the approval votes to get a ranking from most approved to
least approved. This is a calculation done simply for the little genie's
benefit, not for electing anyone, so it doesn't violate 1-man-1-vote. This is
similar to the way that the first round of IRV is done solely for the little
genie's benefit, not for the final decision on who to elect.

3) everyone gives a plurality vote for the person that they approve who has the
highest level of approval. Little genie moves your vote to where it decides it
should be, and you get no control over this, just as in IRV. Unlike IRV, this
choice for the Plurality vote maximises your expectation, based on the
information from the poll and in the approval vote.

4) the person with the most plurality votes wins. This will always be the
approval winner.

Bingo - Approval voting counted in such a way that one-man-one-vote remains
sacrosanct, even under the weirdest interpretations of the mantra. Happy? ;-)





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