Approval Vote: reply to Bart Ingles

[Craig Carey]

Saari publications


At 13:06 03.03.00 , Bart Ingles wrote:
>Craig Carey wrote:
>> >> Are people writing to this list advocating some "Approval Vote" method?.
>> >> Isn't it one of the very worst methods around?.
>> >
>> >In whose estimation?  Prof. Saari?
>> >
>> Was that part of a quite public dispute?. I suppose Borda is better
>>  since the Approval method is a Borda method but with the weights
>>  (1, 1, 1, ...) for each preference.
>
>I recall seeing a brief comment by Saari in either Science News or
>Scientific American where he touts Borda over Approval.  I think he
>co-wrote an article for an academic periodical with a title something
>like "Approval Voting: Unmitigated Evil?", but I didn't have ready


"Is Approval Voting an 'Unmitigated Evil?' A Response to Brams,
 Fishburn, and Merrill," by Donald G. Saari and Jill Van Newenhizen,
  Public Choice (1988), 59:133-147. 

"A Case Against Bullet, Approval and Plurality Voting," by
 Donald G. Saari and Jill Van Newenhizen, January 1985.

"The problem of indeterminacy in approval, multiple, and truncated voting
 systems, Public Choice (1988), 59:101-120, by Donald G. Saari and
 Jill Van Newenhizen,

(Just in case anybody is interested).


>> 
>> Power
>>  +
>>  +                             +     +     +
>>  +                       +                       +
>>  +                 +
>>  +           +
>>  +     +
>>  +-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+---->
>>  0     1     2     3     4     5     6     7  Number of Votes
>> 
>> Voters are expected to want to go into a voting booth and while
>>  in there they want to (a) retain or (b) change the government.
...
>> It is not a method that tries particularly hard to elect their
>>  first preference.
>
>The method doesn't try -- the question of how hard to try to elect a
>first choice is left up to the voter.  
>

If the paper allows 30 Approval sub-votes, any voter can mark just
 a single candidate as the best way to get the method to try hard.


...
>>  Suppose the method was electing two winners.
>>  Approval vote isn't a preferential method.
>>  This voter is either important with 3 votes or the there are
>>  3 voters.
>
>Not sure why you mention a voter with 3 votes -- is this something you
>consider for other systems?

I was imposing a constraint that the counts be integral.
How would you argue that such aa constraint should be imposed?.

>>  In the voting booth the voter can't easily tell if D should
>>  be voted for. The[re] may be >7 candidates so the voter may
>>  imagine that voting for D gives him/her more power.
>>  In this example voting for D is to the voter's disadvantage:
>> 
>>              A     B     C     D
>> 3 Voters:    3     3     3     3
>>   Others:    6     7     8     9
>>    Total:    9     9    11    12
>> Winners  = {C,D}
>> 
>>              A     B     C     D
>> 3 Voters:    3     3     3
>>   Others:    6     7     8     9
>>    Total:    9    10    11     9
>> Winners  = {B,C}
>
>You don't support your claim, since you don't show how many votes the
>remaining candidates are likely to receive.  Voting for D may well be
>the right choice if E,F, or G are also likely to receive 11 or 12 votes.

You need to interpret "there may be >7 candidates" to
 "there are 4 candidates". Then the proof of subsequent preferences
 harming candidates supported by earlier preferences is done and visible.

Of course, a single numerical example is able to allow the Approval Vote
 to found to be failed by that rule.

>
>This example is not really sufficient to predict voter strategy, since

You wrote about "efficiency" in text deleted, and questioned my using
 3 votes for one voter, which indicates a viewpoint difference.

In my opinion, a preferential voting method is best considered by
 infinitesimal alterations to the paper counts. That of course corresponds
 to an actual interest in voters.

There could be a problem with that if rules were not transitive along
 lines (or a cluster of lines bounded by a triangle corner, etc.) in the
 simplex of elections with the vertices being a coordinate space and
 corners representing counts of papers, and so on. Of course every
 method can be considered in that way.


...
>I suggest reading Samuel Merrill, III "Making Elections More
>Democratic", Princeton University Press (1988), for a good explanation
>of voter strategy for both approval and FPP.
>

If instead they were more "rational" or just, then individual voters could
 perhaps be considered more?.

...
>> Electorates may be better off with multiwinner First Past the
>>  Post. At least FPTP/FPP is a true preferential method.
...
>How would you use multiwinner FPP in a single-winner election? 
>Incidentally, it sounds like you are talking about SNTV, which is a
>well-known semi-proportional method for multi-winner elections.


...

------------------------------------------------------

At 15:24 03.03.00 , DEMOREP1 at aol.com wrote:

[100% deleted; I read it.]

Suppose a person was ignorant and didn't use enough Approval sub-votes.