[EM] 02/04/02 - Approval is only for Beauty Contests:

[Forest Simmons]

On Mon, 4 Feb 2002, Richard Moore wrote:

> 
> In beauty contests, or in judged athletic competitions (e.g. gymnastics,
> skating, diving), where (presumably) the voters have no vested interested
> in the outcome (other than their reputation as judges), CR and Borda both
> can be expected to work well, because the ratings or rankings given by the
> judges will be honest. The finer gradations of Borda and especially CR are
> important in such contests, so until Donald presents his theorem we should
> not accept his second statement, that Approval "should be used in any
> election in which the `winner to be' is not important to most of the voters.
> 
> For contests where the voters have a real stake in the outcome, however,
> you can expect the voters in a Borda system to sometimes rank candidates
> insincerely, and you can expect the voters in a CR system to give each
> candidate either the lowest or highest rating (equivalent to their vote
> under Approval).
> 
> In such contests, Approval does have a powerful compromise-seeking tendency
> (a tendency that is of little or no value in the case of impartial judges).
> Each voter goes into the election with a certain expectation of utility for
> the outcome. Each voter will then approve every candidate that has a higher
> utility for that voter than that voter's expectation, and disapprove every
> other candidate. This is basic Approval strategy. Most people who have been
> reading this list for a while are familiar with the zero-information form
> of this, wherein each voter votes for the candidates with greater than
> average utility for that voter.
> 
> What the voter is saying with his/her ballot, then, is "These are the
> candidates I would willingly accept, since any of them would be a better
> result for me than I would normally expect in the current political climate.
> They might not all be my ideal candidate, but I am willing to compromise
> by accepting any of them as the winner."
> 
> The actual winner will be the candidate who is viewed as an acceptable
> compromise by the largest number of voters. In other words, with the
> Approval winner, the smallest number of voters will walk away feeling like
> losers. So again, until Donald presents his theorem, we should not accept
> his first statement, that Approval "should never be used in any election
> in which the `winner to be' is important to most of the voters."
> 
>     -- Richard
> 

I like this succinct summary of why Approval is the "reliable hand tool"
in Mike's metaphor. 

It should be on the front page of somebody's website.

Forest