[EM] Craig's example

[Richard Moore]

Craig Carey's recent ROXY example was just another case of someone
trying to find problems
with Approval and coming up short.

So you have 10 "R" candidates and 20 voters who find them similar
enough, and good enough,
to approve of all of them.

And you have 10 "O" candidates. They are either so dissimilar in spite
of having the same
first initial that the voters for a single "O" candidate cannot find
another "O" candidate
that they like, or the "O" voters are so strategically impaired that
they do not know how
to vote in an Approval election.

And you have a bunch of "X" and "Y" candidates that practically nobody
cares about.

So it's little surprise that the winner will come from the "R" block.
Even if there were only
one "R" candidate, it seems unlikely that the winner will come from
anywhere else.

Perhaps if nine of the "O" candidates dropped out then their supporters
would redistribute
their votes in a way that could affect the outcome. As it is, it seems
the "O" voters
aren't very bright in terms of strategy. Maybe Craig is looking for a
method that doesn't
punish bad strategy. I don't think such a method exists.

But one of Approval's strengths is that nobody has to drop out in order
to give the voters
a fairer choice. Remember the people suggesting Nader should drop out so
that Gore
would have a better shot? That's not a problem in Approval. Assuming of
course that
the voters are smarter than Carey or Davison give them credit for.

Oh, those "O" voters!

Richard