[EM] Month Approval election results
Tom Ruen
tomruen at itascacg.com
Sun Mar 18 22:17:32 PST 2001
Thanks for your comments, Bart! Here's a reply to part.
>...
Bart wrote:
> This was an interesting demonstration, although I don't agree that the
> closeness between May and September was the fault of approval voting.
> Even among those who did express a preference for one or the other,
> there was only a 2 percentage-point difference.
>
> Among the rest of the voters, there is no particular reason to expect
> them to break one way or the other on May vs. September -- if you were
> to hold a runoff between them, the voters may, for lack of a real
> preference, base their decision on something like alphabetical or
> numeric order, or position on the ballot.
I'm betting there is real preference among the 75% that voted for neither or
both.
>.....
Tom wrote:
> > I might suggest a runoff it warranted if less than 50% of voters bullet
> > voted. If this is true, then round up the average voters/voter to a
whole
> > number (3.75) and that can be the threshold for the runoff.
Bart wrote:
> I don't understand this -- although I recall you stating a belief that
> the best approval strategy is to bullet vote. Is it that you suspect
> that voters who don't bullet vote don't really know what they are doing?
I believe voters who supported more than one candidate would like a chance
to decide between a set of choices they like the most of a set of strong
choices in the end. I believe voters who supported none of the strong
candidates also have an interest in deciding which they like better.
Given a problem, I might brain storm choices with no evaluation. Then I'll
cross out the ones I really don't like. Then I might offer a list of choices
I like to others who are involved and see their preferences. Then I'll
probably cut more choices off and continue until I decide on one single
choice. This is how I see an approval runoff working.
It's true, it might be unreasonable to demand 50% or 90% of voters must make
a single decision, but I expect most will be interested in this in the end.
Some will eliminate their favorites and support a stronger compromise. Some
will eliminate their compromises and be satisfied with standing behind a
favorite even one that can't win. This is a choice of voters.
Another approach to ending a runoff might be to have a special vote like
"DONE" which means they are not interested in refining and compromising any
more. A runoff could end when 90% or whatever fraction vote "DONE".
> The presence of a runoff election would tend to negate approval's
> inherent ability to reject low-utility candidates, even without forced
> elimination.
I'm not sure what this means.
> A suggestion for future elections might be to solicit a rating (on a
> scale of 0..10 or so) along with the actual votes. Then you could see
> how well a method does at choosing the overall highest-rated candidate.
> You could also use the ratings to derive approval or ranked votes using
> various strategies.
I like the idea of keeping ballots simple and holding runoffs.
Specifically, I'm imagining an election with live people deciding a winner,
like political party endorsement.
I want something that is easy to count and gives voters the chance to refine
their preferences in a runoff process.
Tom
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bart Ingles" <bartman at netgate.net>
To: <election-methods-list at eskimo.com>
Sent: Sunday, March 18, 2001 11:30 PM
Subject: Re: [EM] Month Approval election results
>
>
> Tom Ruen wrote:
> >
> > This is a first draft analysis on the Month Approval election held over
the
> > last week.
> >
> > I asked people to vote for their favorite months, as many or few as they
> > liked. I said if none had a majority approval, the top approval
candidate
> > would win, and if more than 2 had a majority approval, then there would
be a
> > runoff among them.
> >
> > There were a total of 57 ballots cast. Most of the them were from
friends
> > and coworkers (In continental extreme climate of Minnesota!), but there
were
> > about a dozen by email on the EM and IRV-freewheeling email lists.
> >
> > The approval results are:
> > Total Ballots=57
> > Sep 28 ( 49.12%)
> > May 27 ( 47.37%)
> > Jul 23 ( 40.35%)
> > Oct 21 ( 36.84%)
> > Jun 20 ( 35.09%)
> > Aug 20 ( 35.09%)
> > Apr 17 ( 29.82%)
> > Nov 14 ( 24.56%)
> > Dec 13 ( 22.81%)
> > Feb 11 ( 19.30%)
> > Mar 10 ( 17.54%)
> > Jan 10 ( 17.54%)
> >
> > September officially wins this election by a hair over May.
> >
> > My main interest was to compare this to plurality, although I didn't ask
> > voters to also specify their top vote to compare the results. I can,
> > however, show a similar election I held a couple months ago with ranked
> > ballots. (Note: In that election, I allowed tied ranked, and I count
them by
> > dividing a full vote equally among the candidates in the tie. This
causes
> > some fractional votes.)
> >
> > Plurality vote (top rank votes): (previous election)
> > Total Ballots=105
> > Sep=20.0 (19.0%)
> > May=16.3 (15.5%)
> > Aug=12.3 (11.7%)
> > Jul=10.1 (9.6%)
> > Apr=9.5 (9.0%)
> > Oct=8.3 (7.9%)
> > Feb=6.0 (5.7%)
> > Jan=6.0 (5.7%)
> > Dec=5.3 (5.1%)
> > Nov=5.0 (5.0%)
> > Jun=4.3 (4.3%)
> > Mar=2.0 (1.9%)
> >
> > Condorcet ranking: [2=win, 1=tie, 0=lose] (same previous election)
> > Total Ballots=105
> > S M A J J O A D N F M J
> > e a p u u c u e o e a a
> > p y r n l t g c v b r n
> > Sep - 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
> > May 0 - 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
> > Apr 0 0 - 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
> > Jun 0 0 0 - 2 1 2 2 2 2 2 2
> > Jul 0 0 0 0 - 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
> > Oct 0 0 0 1 0 - 2 2 2 2 2 2
> > Aug 0 0 0 0 0 0 - 2 2 2 2 2
> > Dec 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 - 2 2 2 2
> > Nov 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 - 2 2 2
> > Feb 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 - 2 2
> > Mar 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 - 2
> > Jan 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 -
> >
> > These results can't be compared with the approval election since the
voter
> > base is different, but you can see a few things. All three methods
agreed in
> > the top two places, so this is a pretty easy election considering the
number
> > of candidates. Also the approval ordering is closer (than Plurality) to
the
> > Condorcet ordering. (IRV gives the same ordering as Condorcet in this
ranked
> > election if I eliminate winners and repeat the process.)
> >
> > This to me is a demonstration that simple approval voting can go a long
way
> > in expressing overall voter preference.
> >
> > In the plurality election, only 19% supported September first. The
approval
> > election demonstrates that September's support runs much deeper than
this
> > core, even without a runoff.
> >
> > Here's some other statistics on the approval election:
> > 57 Ballots/voters.
> > 214 votes (3.75 votes/voter)
> > Votes/ballot distribution:
> > Votes Voters
> > 0 1 (No months liked!)
> > 1 7
> > 2 18
> > 3 12
> > 4 4
> > 5 1
> > 6 3
> > 7 4
> > 8 2
> > 9 1
> > 10 2
> > 11 1
> > 12 1 (All months liked!)
> >
> > With only 57 voters, there are 3 candidates between 40-50% approval. I
> > decided to look at the distribution of ballots among these 3 candidates.
> > These 3 candidates perhaps represent the top of 3 coalitions - Spring,
> > Summer, and Fall.
> >
> > Ballot frequency count: (8 types of ballots)
> > M J S
> > A U E
> > Y L P Frequency
> > 0 0 0 15 30.6% (No preference known)
> > 1 0 0 3 6.1%
> > 0 1 0 8 16.3% (Summer lovers)
> > 0 0 1 4 8.2%
> > 1 1 0 3 6.1%
> > 1 0 1 12 24.5% (Spring/Fall overlapping)
> > 0 1 1 3 6.1%
> > 1 1 1 9 18.4% (Spring/Summer/Fall overlap)
> >
> > 69.4% support at least one of these 3.
> > 55.1% support at least two of these 3.
> > 18.4% support all 3 choices!
> >
> > And looking only at the top two candidates:
> > Ballot frequency count: (4 types of ballots)
> > M S
> > A E
> > Y P Frequency
> > 0 0 23 43.4%
> > 1 0 6 11.3%
> > 0 1 7 13.2%
> > 1 1 21 39.6%
> >
> > This is illuminating. 56.6% of voters supported either September or May,
and
> > 39.6% support BOTH! Only 24.5% have made a clear decision among the top
two
> > choices. This means 75% of voters have not openly decided among which of
> > these two strongest approval candidates to support!
> >
> > My simple and obvious conclusion is that a single round of Approval is
not
> > overly decisive election among 12 strong candidates when voters are
voting
> > blindly and cautiously.
>
> This was an interesting demonstration, although I don't agree that the
> closeness between May and September was the fault of approval voting.
> Even among those who did express a preference for one or the other,
> there was only a 2 percentage-point difference.
>
> Among the rest of the voters, there is no particular reason to expect
> them to break one way or the other on May vs. September -- if you were
> to hold a runoff between them, the voters may, for lack of a real
> preference, base their decision on something like alphabetical or
> numeric order, or position on the ballot.
>
>
> > Sincerely,
> > Tom Ruen
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