Margins, majority, strategy

DEMOREP1 at aol.com DEMOREP1 at aol.com
Tue Sep 15 13:08:35 PDT 1998


Simple Approval voting is defective.  If number votes were being used, a
Condorcet winner can lose using simple Approval votes.

Example- each vote is an approval vote
51 ABC
45 BC
3   CA

Approval votes-
A 54
B  96
C  99
C wins using Approval.

A has a first choice majority and is an automatic Condorcet winner if number
votes were being used.   The A candidate, using pre-election poll results,
would obviously try to get his/her 51 supporters to truncate in an Approval
voting election.

Simple Approval voting is defective because it fails to distinguish among
choices using number votes.
Simple Condorcet voting is defective because it fails to have a YES majority
Approval-type vote on each choice.
Thus, I have suggested that there should be both a YES/NO vote and the use of
number votes. 

The range of choices are--
desired       compromise      opposed

The desired choices of minorities will lose using YES/NO votes.  The
compromise choices of such minorities will move up using the number votes.
Probably a compromise choice will be a Condorcet winner.

I note again that laws get passed by YES majorities in legislative bodies --
and not by YES minorities.   I fail to see why YES majorities should not be
required in a single winner election method to elect executive and judicial
officers.

Mr. Ossipoff apparently thinks that voting YES on one or more compromise
choices along with one's desired choice(s) is somehow bad.   I would suggest
that the mythical average voter (i.e. all voters) can survive OK by voting YES
on his/her desired and compromise choices and number voting his/her desired
choices ahead of his/her compromise choices.

How many real public elections will have 3 or more choices getting YES
majorities (such as Kennedy, Carter, Clinton or Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan or
Kennedy, Clinton, Reagan) with such 3 or more choices in a circular tie ?



More information about the Election-Methods mailing list