[EM] 03/30/02 - Re: How to vote in Approval:

[Dave Ketchum]

On Mon, 1 Apr 2002 12:42:03 -0800 (PST) Forest Simmons wrote:

> On Sun, 31 Mar 2002, Adam Tarr wrote:
> 
> 
>>Dave wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I have nothing nice to say about Approval, noting that no one seems able
>>>to give me useful guidelines as to how well I should have to like a
>>>candidate to say "approve".
>>>
>>Rob LeGrand came up with a decent strategy that makes a lot of
>>sense.  Approve every candidate you like more than the front runner, and
>>approve the front runner if you like him/her more than the second-place
>>candidate.  This requires knowing who's top two in the polls, but this is a
>>pretty good bet in a large election.
>>
> 
> Here's another approach that is near optimal in practice:
> 
> (1) rank the candidates as you would for your favorite Condorcet method.
> (2) convert the ranks to Borda scores by subtracting from the number of
> candidates.
> (3) adjust the numbers so that they better reflect your relative
> intensities of preference or "utilities" for the candidates. Call these
> numbers "ratings."
> (4) assign subjective probabilities of winning for each candidate.
> (5) multiply the ratings by the respective probabilities and add the
> results to get what we will call the expected winner rating (EWR).
> (6) approve all of the candidates that you have rated above this EWR.
> 
> In the case of zero information all of the probabilities would be equal,
> so you would be approving by the "above mean utility strategy" which is
> often advocated as near optimal for the zero-info case. In other words,
> this strategy is a straight-forward extension of the above mean utility
> strategy.


With my voter hat on, these strange sentences cannot be worth trying to 
decipher.

With my student hat on, prospects do not look much better.

> 
> <snip>
> 
>>Approval certainly has its places.  If I had to advocate wide-scale single
>>winner voting reform to a large group that was not familiar with it, my
>>inclination is to advocate approval voting.  It's simple and it's an
>>obvious improvement over plurality.  But if I'm trying to turn around an
>>IRV advocate, I would definitely jump straight to advocating Condorcet
>>voting.  Once someone has accepted the concept of ranked ballots, they have
>>a certain intuitive appeal that's hard to give up.  It's hard to convince
>>someone who's bought into IRV that you get better results with plain old
>>unranked approval ballots.  But a few simple examples will convince all but
>>the most hardheaded IRV advocate that Condorcet is superior.
>>
> 
> Yes, if they are willing to fill out the IRV ballots, show them what those
> ballots can do, given half a chance.


I miss understanding how filling out Condorcet ballots, or even the 
identical IRV ballots (unless IRV inspires an attempt at strategy), is so 
complicated.  Simply indicate my strongest preferences until I get down to 
not worth bothering with - what could be simpler?

It is the vote counting and calculating that contains any complexity.

> 
> Better yet, show them the advantages of CR ballots where you don't have to
> pretend that all of your preferences are of equal intensity.
> 
> Most people don't have the patience to rank two dozen candidates. Giving
> each a grade of A,B,C,D,F or (default) E, is easier.


But, in IRV or Condorcet, I quit as soon as I have said all I care to say. 
  Assigning grades is a complication that is not worth the pain.

> 
> [The reason I believe the default grade should be E, is that F should be
> reserved for someone that you are sure about being no good. But beware,
> this convention might backfire if you allow election of someone with a
> majority of below D grades.]
> 
> 
> Forest

-- 
  davek at clarityconnect.com    http://www.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek
   Dave Ketchum    108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY  13827-1708    607-687-5026
              Do to no one what you would not want done to you.
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