[EM] "Higher Resolution Methods"

[Forest Simmons]

I believe that "higher resolution methods" have a place, but mostly in
non-political contexts like pattern recognition, where the grading or
judging is done by mechanical sensors or where the graders have no stake
in the outcome.  Ice skating competition judges seem to have set grading
standards, since they routinely give scores within 10% of each other.

Let me summarize again why I favor AV.  Cardinal Ratings (high resolution) 
can be considered a refinement of both AV information and Ordinal Ranking
information, so it is more "expressive" than either.  But optimal strategy
voting based on Cardinal Ratings results almost surely in an AV ballot.
This strongly suggests to me that although the AV ballot may not be as
expressive as the others, it carries the most relevant information for the
actual election.

In a mechanical or otherwise non-strategical situation, the Cardinal
Rating would be preferable if available.

Forest

On Wed, 17 Jan 2001, Bart Ingles wrote:

> 
> 
> Joe Weinstein wrote:
> 
> > What happens when K=1 - a single-winner election - and a nontrivial f
> > is used?  Nothing different at all, if our 1-winner grading method is
> > pass-fail ('approval'), but something quite interesting and useful if
> > we use a higher-resolution method such as centile grading.  A
> > candidate will then be rewarded not only for attaining a high average
> > grade but also for this average being the result of a broad base of
> > consistent support (rather than strong support from some segments of
> > the electorate and weak support from others).  In short, depending on
> > the particular convex function f used, we can craft a victory
> > criterion which may be an attractive compromise between the extremes
> > of high average (but possibly badly distributed) support and majority
> > preference (which may be tepid and be more than averaged out by strong
> > minority disapproval).
> 
> 
> One question: why would any voter want to vote anything other than 0.0
> or 1.0 for any individual candidate?  I understand that a voter may be
> truly undecided about a candidate, but in that case why wouldn't a
> coin-toss serve just as well?
> 
> Bart
> 
>