[EM] Nomination

Thu Apr 19 15:40:31 PDT 2001

I see. And I agree that this problem has to be resolved by voter education
and some failsafe measures as well.

One solution would be to include the last ranked among the disapproved.

Another solution would be to include the last ranked among the disapproved
only for untruncated ballots.

Another possibility would be to not leave room for a fully ranked ballot.
If there are 15 candidates, only leave 14 spaces for ranking.

It's hard to think of any situation in which there would be some advantage
to approving one's last choice. The only case I can think of is when there
is a minimum approval quota for a valid election winner.  Someone might
want to approve everyone just to help get the darn thing over with.

Interactive voting machines would easily solve this problem, no matter
which of the conventions we adopted regarding disapproval.

Forest

On Wed, 18 Apr 2001, Richard Moore wrote:

[snipped]

> <html><head></head><body>Forest Simmons wrote:<br>

> I agree, in theory. In practice, this becomes another voter education issue:<br>
> Voters should understand that (truncation == disapproval) and that<br>
> (ranking == approval). Many will probably understand the first premise<br>
> intuitively but I don't expect a lot of voters to grasp immediately that if<br>
> they rank a candidate last, they are still approving that candidate (in terms<br>
> of the completion algorithm, that is). <br>
>   <br>
> Richard<br>