[EM] Why use more than two grades?

[Forest Simmons]

Joe, I used to think like you do on this matter, and I like the civil
rights idea and the public appeal idea, but the voter who wants to exert
maximum influence on the results of the election will do better by voting
at the extremes. 

It's refreshing that someone would sacrifice this influence to express
himself more accurately, but until a huge majority can be trusted to
take this same attitude, the carefully thought out degrees of approval
will be lost in the din of the masses.

Of course, if it is a matter of honesty and conscience, that is reason
enough to disregard what other voters might do. I voted for Nader for this
reason.  Otherwise, I felt, some day God would ask me why I voted for one
of the evils when there was a perfectly good choice available. For that
matter if God came down in disguise and ran for president, He probably
wouldn't stand much of a chance.

I guess I fear the day of eternal judgment more than I fear what Bush or
Gore could do to me and my family here on planet Earth in the next four
years. You could even factor that into your utility calculations and call
it strategic voting. 

It might be practical to have a non-binding poll based on honest approval
levels, just to help everybody know where they stand before the big
election, but even when the pressure to win is off, there might be some
manipulators.

There are many other (mechanical or nonpolitical) contexts where higher
resolution would have obvious value, so let's keep studying it for all of
these reasons and more.

One not so obvious application is to use a high resolution system when
evaluating the performance of a low resolution method during simulation. 
Start the simulation with the honest levels of approval of the
hypothetical voters.  From these, figure out how the voters would mark the
more restrictive ballots, taking into account the likely strategies of the
voters. Using only these ballots (without the more expressive information)
try all of the competing methods. When the results are in for the
different methods, see how they stack up to a higher resolution method
based on the honest values.  Repeat the simulations until the competing
methods start to show patterns of strengths and weaknesses.  The higher
resolution method has inside information that the competing methods do not
have, so it stands a chance of being a standard of comparison. 

Forest

On Fri, 19 Jan 2001, Joe Weinstein wrote:

> WHY USE MORE THAN TWO GRADES?
> 
> In response (1/17) to my last posting (1/16), Bart Ingles asks:
> 
> "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?"
> 
> WHY ME? To be fair, these basic queries ought to be put not just to me but 
> to ALL advocates of what are in effect higher-resolution grading methods 
> (more than two grade values allowed).  These methods include all schemes - 
> e.g. Borda, Condorcet, ‘cumulative' voting, and ‘instant runoff'- which 
> allow (or indeed even force) strict ranking of three or more candidates.  
> Nontrivial instances of (and discussions about) these methods require three 
> or more grade values.
> 
> In fact, only two methods discussed on this list DON'T use more than two 
> grade values, namely the prevalent lone-mark (‘plurality), and pass-fail 
> (‘approval').
> 
> Here are my basic responses to Bart's basic queries.
> 
> 
> RESPONSE TO FIRST QUERY. For many intimate or smaller-scale elections, 
> pass-fail (‘approval') grading, using just two grades,  will be adequate - 
> and may be required for simplicity of tabulation.  However, in larger or 
> more public elections, with thousands or even millions of voters, use of 
> higher-resolution grading will impose little or no extra burden on the 
> already requisite computerized tabulation.  Moreover, as it is unlikely that 
> any outcome will be determined by a single vote, a major electoral function 
> and voter motivation - and arguably a civil right of both voters and 
> candidate - is conferred when the available grade levels allow a voter V to 
> express her (or his) evaluations to higher resolution.
> 
> In brief, a voter V should (and may as well, given modern technology) be 
> enabled to better express her grade of each candidate.  Closer realization 
> of this goal is a major reason for considering alternative election methods 
> at all.
> 
> Even with just two candidates, V may well wish to ‘send a message' to future 
> politics, that her favored candidate has most, but far from all, of her 
> support.  For example, she may wish to vote A 0.6, B 0.0 . Or, with three 
> candidates, she may wish to express a judgment that B is much  worse (or 
> anyhow much less worthy of support) than A but much better than C, e.g.: A 
> 1.0, B 0.6, C 0.1.   For a 6 Nov. 2000 example using candidates initials 
> (with IW =Ideal Write-In), I myself wanted to vote something like: IW 1.0, 
> AG 0.8, RN 0.7, HB 0.3, GB 0.2, PB 0.0.
> 
> Maybe most voters in most elections will not care to use the grading option 
> to its fullest degree.  That situation would contradict neither this 
> option's benefits nor its very necessity, as a attainable civil right of 
> free expression, for voters and candidates.  One could as well rule out any 
> one of some better-known civil rights and liberties, e.g. freedom of speech 
> or of the press, on the grounds that relatively few citizens ever use these 
> options to their fullest, or at all.
> 
> 
> RESPONSE TO SECOND QUERY.  If voter V truly cannot credibly assign candidate 
> C some minimal nonzero grade, then C may as well receive the grade 0, - 
> either explicitly from V, or by automatic default from V's failure to mark 
> any grade for C.
> 
> 
> Joe Weinstein
> Long Beach CA USA
> 
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