[EM] CR style ballots for Ranked Preferences

[Bart Ingles]

Dave Ketchum wrote:
> 
> I wander in looking for something better than plurality for uses up to
> and including electing a governor in NY - where we may have a dozen
> candidates next year:
>      Rules for voters MUST be simple and understandable.
>      Rules for deciding on a winner must be reasonably simple, and NOT
> declare as winners obvious losers.
> 
> So we need preference voting.
> Must be able to combine votes from thousands of precincts.

Your conclusions (preference voting, combining precincts) don't
necessarily follow from the requirements.  Approval voting is obviously
the simplest method other than simple plurality, and is consistent
(consistency means that combining two precincts, each with the same
winner, is guaranteed to produce the same overall winner).

None of the other methods mentioned here (except plurality) is
consistent (although IRV would obviously fail more often).

Approval voting also has a track record, in private elections (but in
some fairly prominent organizations).

Bart Ingles




> IRV clearly fails, due to easily declaring wrong winners - also has
> trouble due to vote patterns being important (Condorcet only counts
> pairs, with results that can be easily combined into sums for use in
> deciding on a winner).
> 
> So far I LIKE Condorcet, though picking the best way to pick a winner
> from a set of counts needs thought.
> 
> I like that without the >>> that I see below.
> 
> REAL question:  Could Condorcet both be improved AND remain explainable
> to my voters with >>> introduced?  My suspicion is that the answer is no.
> 
> Dave Ketchum