[EM] Approval Voting vs Instant Runoff Voting:

[Bart Ingles]

LAYTON Craig wrote:
> 
> Approval can elect a candidate that isn't preferred by a majority to any
> other candidate.  This seems fairly anathema to the concept of democracy to
> me.

*Any* election system can do this.  But if you are going to compare
Condorcet methods to approval voting, then please state whether you mean
sincere preferences or votes-as-cast.

If votes-as-cast, then of course no approval majority can be overridden,
except by a larger majority.

If sincere preferences, then I maintain that the actual winner of a
Condorcet election can just as easily be someone not preferred by a
majority.  In fact the same (or at least analogous) strategic voting
considerations come into play with Condorcet as with approval
(especially in partial-info situations).


> >If you are departing from the four-equal-frontrunner example above, then
> >I would expect the vast majority of voters to bullet vote, at least
> >present-day U.S. elections where two parties dominate.  Assuming most
> >voters, at least for the near future, continue to prefer major party
> >candidates, then I would expect them to bullet vote.  Sorry, but I
> >really don't see this as a problem.
> 
> Yes, Approval does well when there are only two candidates with a chance of
> winning, but then, so does IRV.  In fact, IRV does better, because it
> ensures that the most popular of the two candidates wins (which would also
> be the Condorcet winner).

I would dispute that, although it depends on what you mean by
"popular".  Gore wasn't very popular among actual Nader voters in any
meaningful sense, if they continued to vote for Nader in the face of
certain defeat.

If the word "popular" has anything to do with "utility", then any ranked
voting system can elect the least popular candidate.  This may be true
of approval as well, but approval doesn't seem prone to the extremes of
other systems.