[EM] 12/22/02 - Markus Schulze Wrote and Wrote again:

[Craig Carey]

At 02\12\24 00:33 +0200 Tuesday, Markus Schulze wrote:
 >Dear Adam,
 >
 >in my opinion, the used STV method should be able to interpret
 >X-vote ballots appropriately. But it should not require X-vote
 >ballots.
 >

I agree too. An STV election ought allow voters to use a "X" instead
of an integer. Not an integer if that paper has HTML radio buttons.

A bollot like this could be handled too:

..............(1) (2) (3)
Candidate A ...X...X
Candidate B....X.......X

Apparently in New Zealand, the courts are drifting over to taking
interpretations that are less considerating of wordings wherever and
more considerate of what the voter did desire. Somewhere out in the
future, courts would allow "X"s or would want to allow them.

Certainly one termporary staffer of the New Zealand Internal Affairs
rejected the idea of "X"s saying (shorn of details) that STV did not
do that. Internal Affairs made a decision to stuff me around over
how to thank her for writing to (she quite) so I might post an OIA
if I feel like it out to the agency that was attempting to shuffle
local councils into using STV. Rod Donald never sought jail terms for
councillors. However he did offer a lot of non-monotoncity for
elections with more than 2 winners.


 >The problem with approval voting is that voters who don't have
 >enough information will approve either all potential winners or
 >no potential winner so that these voters will have no influence
 >on the result of the elections. When ranking ballots are being
 >used, then a voter can cast a meaningful ballot even when he
 >has no information about the opinions of the other voters.
 >

I don't recall saying that point. I was imaging that some voters
would refuse to maximise their power and other voters would not,
and those that would refuse include many voters that should not
have their power reduced. For example, Neo-Nazi thugs. Of course,
for them to get themselves ahead, they would use real data, which
could allow the principle opposing Approval to drift from my idea
that it is wrong to have people be behind who refuse to get ahead,
over to Mr Shulze's idea of it being wrong to allow people who
refuse to stay behind, to get ahead.

For example, the voting system ought allow the deputy leader to
cast only a single preference that is for himself. Rather than
the accepting explanations from the Approval Advocates that that
is intolerable, Approval would somehow end up being never used.

Maybe it might be possible to unify the two ideas.

Approval is a method of a Mr Brams.



Craig Carey

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