Winning-votes intuitive?

Adam Tarr atarr at purdue.edu
Thu Feb 21 20:11:12 PST 2002


Forest wrote:

>[...] if we interpret truncations as NO and ranked as YES.
>
>This time Bush wins, having greater approval than Gore.
>
>I suggest that this is a reasonable interpretation, and that the resulting
>version of Approval Completed Condorcet is not too shabby.

The problem with handling Approval Completed Condorcet in this fashion is 
that it creates a strong incentive to truncate those candidates you 
disapprove of, even if you have a preference between some of them.  In the 
example I gave, for instance, it would create a strong incentive for the 12 
Gore>Bush>Nader voters to bullet vote for Gore.  This denies information to 
the preceding Condorcet vote; we may end up with the Approval completion 
corrupting the initial search for a Condorcet winner.

As Alex said, it seems that putting a yes/no vote would not be too much 
extra effort.  A 5 grade (4 grade? 6 grade? ABCDEF?) ballot that allows 
implicit yes/no votes by the grade given is a possible solution here, and 
allows for very intuitive Approval Completed Condorcet.  Has anyone tried 
to figure out what criteria are satisfied by such a form of ACC?

If pure ranked ballots are the only option, then I'm still very comfortable 
with SSD.  It takes a very peculiar circular tie in order to cause any sort 
of trouble with SSD.

-Adam



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