(Fwd) Reply to 52-alternative fwd

[Steve Eppley]

It looks like Mike intended to send the message below to the EM list,
not just to me. --Steve

------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
Subject:       Reply to 52-alternative fwd
To:            Steve Eppley <seppley at alumni.caltech.edu>
Date:          Tue, 17 Dec 96 12:31:21 PST
From:          Mike Ossipoff <dfb at bbs.cruzio.com>

This is my reply to a copy of Steve's initial letter about the
52-candidate election. Is it a postal balloting, or an
e-mail balloting, or a meeting balloting by show-of-hands or
paper ballot? 

I don't think it's necessary to eliminatate anything before
the rankings are collected. If necessary, you could just
specify that rankings be limited to, say, 2 alternatives, or
limited to 3 alternatives.

For postal, e-mail, or paper balloting, I suggest Condorcet, with
ranking-length limited, if necessary. But I have a 1-page BASIC
program to do a plain Condorcet count, and  Rob L. has a
perl program for Condorcet. My program is very short, & could
quickly be typed into a computer, and Rob's program can, as
I understand it, be used right where it is, at his web site.

Have you considered www balloting? That way, using procedures
that you & Rob, but not I, would know about, the rankings can
be automatically received & counted at a www site. A university
student govt, a few years ago, conducted its elections at awww
site in that manner. 

Rob may, at this time, have added Smith//Condorcet to his www
site's capability.

***

If the balloting is to be by show-of-hands, then I'd suggest
Condorcet///Approval if people aren't stubborn about circular-
tie solution. Or BeatsAll//Appoval if it's not possible to
get agreement about circular tie solution. 

I've just realized that my suggestion to limit ranking-length
doesn't apply in show-of-hands voting, and, in that case, maybe
it would be desirale to use Approval as a quick & easy, but
good, way to limit the Condorcet count to a managable number
of alternatives. It depends on how willing the participants
are to use more than 1 method. If they don't accept that
2-method proposal, then maybe that could make it unfeasible
to use Condorcet in the show-of-hands vote, and in that
case it would be better to just use Repeated Balloting
(preferably with Approval, with no more than N-1 ballotings).

Of if time in a show-of-hands vote is really short then
use Majority//Approval, or Approal-Majority//Approval, which
just use 2 ballotings at the most.

In Majority//Approval, ask people to vote for their favorite,
and if something gets a majority it wins. If not, then hold
an all-inclusive Approval balloting.

In Approval-Majority//Approval, the difference is tht the 1st
balloting is also an Approval balloting, and if 1 or more
alternatives get vote totals at least equal to half the number
of voters then the one with most votes wins. Otherwise hold
an Approval vote (of course in the 2nd balloting the one with
mosts votes wins).

By the way, if you do pairwise in show-of-hands balloting, I
emphasize that the 2-balloting methods Condorcet///Approval
or BeatsAll//Approval would be better than using ordinary
Condorcet in a show-of-hands vote.

In Condorcet///Approval, use Condorcet, but if every alternative
has a majority against it, then hold a 2nd ballotng by
Approval. 

In Smith//Condorcet///Aproval, use Smith//Condorcet, but if
every alternative in the Smith set has a majority against it
then use an Approval balloting to choose from the Smith set.

Likewise, BeatsAll//Approval could be replaced by Smith//Approval,
if Approval's choice is limited to the Smith set.


Mike