Ranked ballots only? (was Re: Attachment CRITTBL1)

[Bruce Anderson]

On May 27,  5:00pm, Steve Eppley wrote:
> Subject: Ranked ballots only? (was Re: Attachment CRITTBL1)
>
> You begin as many do, by limiting the voters to ranked ballots (or
> at most ranked+approval ballots) without explaining why more voter
> expression (candidate ratings) isn't allowed.  Granted, this is
> beyond the scope of this paper, but how about including a reference
> to an explanation? 
> 
> You've advocated Regular Champion, I believe, which is a ranked
> ballot method.  Why do you believe that rated ballot methods are
> inferior?  (I hope no one infers from my question that I believe
> rated ballot methods are superior... it's just a question and not 
> a statement!) 
> 
>-- End of excerpt from Steve Eppley

You are quite correct in saying that a comprehensive discussion of voting 
methods would include a discussion, or references to discussions, of more 
general expressions of voters opinions than just numerical rankings.  Systems 
using such expressions frequently call them interpersonal preference comparisons 
or interpersonal utility comparisons in the published literature of social 
choice theory.  I remember reading that there are severe theoretical problems 
with attempting to base group decisions on such comparisons.  Unfortunately, I 
can't remember where or when I read this, and I have no really good set of 
references available.  I would be happy to accept suggestions.  However, as you 
and Mike and others have pointed out, such systems invariably suffer from the 
practical problem that voters have no incentive to give less favored candidates 
intermediate ratings, as that only serves to help those candidates defeat the 
voter's more favored candidates.  Instead, these systems give voters strong 
incentives to rate favored candidates as high as possible and non-favored 
candidates has low as possible.  Conversely, no interpersonal utility 
comparisons are needed for ranked voting methods.

I have written an initial draft of a paper discussing a version of this issue 
from a different viewpoint.  I will try to post this initial draft in my "ugly 
text attachment with a Word document available" format in the near future.  
Unfortunately, I am (as I suspect many others are) under binding time (and 
health) constraints, and I simply cannot do all that should be done anywhere 
near as quickly as I would like to do it.

Bruce