[EM] Re: Total Approval Ranked Pairs

[Russ Paielli]

Ted Stern tedstern-at-mailinator.com |EMlist| wrote:
> On 14 Mar 2005 at 22:02 PST, Jobst Heitzig wrote:
> 
> 
>>Dear Forest, Russ, and Ted!
>>
>>I suggest that we call the method we discussed under various names
>>in the last days ARC (Approval Runoff Condorcet) and continue to
>>study its properties, especially its anti-strategy properties.
>>
>>I agree with Russ that it is perhaps a very nice first public
>>proposal, especially because it may be a nice compromise between
>>IRV- and Condorcet-supporters: Both methods are Runoffs which delete
>>the single candidate with the least points until there is among the
>>rest a candidate with a special property!
>>
>>Yours, Jobst
> 
> 
> I do agree that Approval Runoff Condorcet (ARC) finds the same winner
> as Approval-seeded Bubble Sort (ABS).
> 
> But I happen to think eliminating candidates through Runoff is one of
> IRV's weakest points.  Its only appeal is familiarity.  It seems to me
> that the key reason for eliminating primaries is to keep candidates in
> as long as possible, to enable voters to coalesce around the one whose
> views are closest to the majority.

The problem with IRV is not that it eliminates candidates but rather 
*how* it eliminates them. IRV elimination is based on the first-choice 
counts only. That encourages voters to insincerely promote their "lesser 
of two evils" candidate into first position. In RAV (Ranked Approval 
Voting, or whatever you call it), on the other hand, elimination is 
based on Approval scores, and we all know about the virtues of Approval.

As for a name for the method, I think it might be wise to keep the word 
"runoff" out of it just to avoid such associations. The RAV procedure is 
not really a runoff in the same sense as IRV.

--Russ