[EM] "Higher Resolution Methods"

[LAYTON Craig]

My criticisms of Approval go double for Cardinal Ratings.  At least with
Approval, by assisting voters to use optimal strategy, the chance of a
non-majoritarian outcome is significantly decreased, as is the difference in
power between individual votes (as voting power is somewhat standardised).
This important issue is disenfranchisement of voters (typically poorer or
minority voters) who do not have the same access to information or
understanding of strategy as other voters.  Of course, these problems are
further solved by using ordinal rankings, but then again, ordinal rankings
can have other problems, as most of you have pointed out.

-----Original Message-----
From: Forest Simmons [mailto:fsimmons at pcc.edu]
Sent: Thursday, 18 January 2001 9:26
To: election-methods-list at eskimo.com
Subject: [EM] "Higher Resolution Methods"

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