[EM] Ranked Approval Voting (RAV)

[Russ Paielli]

Chris Benham chrisbenham-at-bigpond.com |EMlist| wrote:
> Russ,
> You wrote (Sun. Mar.13):
> 
> "Since we're discussing names for election methods, I'd like to propose
> one: Ranked Approval Voting (RAV).
> 
> RAV works as follows:
> 
> The voter ranks the approved candidates only. The CW wins if one exists,
> otherwise the least approved candidate is eliminated until a CW is found."
> 
> I think that with pre-polls and strategy, this would usually give the 
> same result as IRV.  In the three-candidate case,
> I see it only giving a different result when a lot of voters have a big 
> sincere ratings gap between their second and third
> choice and yet they wouldn't  be prepared to order-reverse (Compromise) 
> in IRV.
> Otherwise, parties/candidates that see themselves as having a chance of 
> winning will advise their supporters to bullet-vote,
> and the same candidates as in IRV will be eliminated.

I don't see why that would happen. I could be missing something, but I 
don't see why any voter would not approve the same candidates he would 
approve in a pure approval election. The fact that he gets to rank the 
approved candidates is just "icing on the cake." How can the voter be 
any worse off ranking the candidates honestly than he would be letting 
them all be equal? OK, I understand that equal rankings might be useful 
in some situations, but if they are available, then the voter can vote 
all the approved candidates equal as in an actual Approval election.

> What is your argument against the even simpler:
> "Voters rank the candidates they approve. Elect the CW if there is one, 
> otherwise elect the Approval winner" ?
> (or a slightly more complex version that stipulates that the winner must 
> be in the Schwartz or Smith set?).

I think that's a good system too. In fact, I independently thought of it 
and proposed it recently here on EM, stating in the process that I would 
be very surprised if it hadn't already been proposed. Indeed it had. I 
think it is preferable to defeat-dropping Condorcet methods, but I don't 
think it is as good as RAV because it devolves straight back to Approval 
in the absense of a CW. It would at least need to restrict the winner to 
the Smith set to make sense to me.

Regards,
Russ