[EM] Approval Promoters; "Stop Fooling Yourselves"

[Buddha Buck]

At 07:32 AM 04-05-2001 -0400, I Like Irving wrote:
>- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 04/05/01
>
>Harper, you wrote: "A ranking of A>B>C>D>E does not equate to an approval
>vote which approves all five candidates."
>
>Davison: I know this and you know this, but if and when there is ever an
>Approval election, most of the voters will cast their ballots as: A>B>C>D>E
>and you Approval promoters will have no qualms about tabulating these
>ballots as A=B=C=D=E.  This is the deceit that you are counting on so you
>can leverage a candidate with only a few votes into being the winner.

If there is ever a public Approval election, and the ballots ALLOW me to 
cast my ballot as A>B>C>D>E, I'll complain to the board of elections, and 
potentially sue them to invalidate the election due to 
incompetence.  Expressing 5 levels of preference (such as A>B>C>D>E) is not 
an Approval ballot.

There is no general way to convert between a fully-ranked ballot to an 
approval ballot, and vice versa.  The fully-ranked ballot you cite could be 
equally cast by a voter who feels that all 5 candidates are good choices 
that will do an excellent job (albeit A would be better than B, etc), who 
would vote for all 5 candidates on a proper Approval ballot, and by a voter 
who feels that all 5 candidates are scum, and should be in prison rather 
than in public office, who would vote for none of the candidates on a 
proper Approval ballot.  The information Approval needs just isn't there on 
the ballot.