[EM] Dave Ketchum reply, part 1

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

I'd said:

>The activists, the progressive electoral reformers, in your community
>might much prefer Condorcet to Approval, due to rankings. But
>maybe the average voter might prefer Approval because it's less of
>a departure from Plurality. Approval isn't a completely new voting
>system; it's merely Plurality done right.

Dave replied:

I keep hearing you say that - I remain UNconvinced that Approval is
that
simple

I reply:

Approval, the balloting & count rule, is extremely simple. A
nonprobabilistic method as simple as Approval can't be as strategy-
free as Condorcet(wv). Approval is simply Plurality with one simple
rule added: Voters may vote for more than 1. Approval is nothing other
than Plurality done right. Approval is simple in that sense.

Dave continued:

- after you tell me I can select more than one, I have to decipher
how many is a reasonable selection in each case.

I reply:

I remind you that you also have to do that now, with Plurality.
With Approval, a good strategy is to vote for the candidate whom you'd
vote for in Plurality, and also for everyone whom you like better.
Voting in Approval is _not_ more complicated than voting in Plurality.
Approval is an obvious undeniable improvement over Plurality. That
can't be said for IRV.

We here have posted many Approval strategies, including the
best-of-the-frontrunners strategy, the one that everyone uses in
Plurality. Now, maybe it's far from obvious who the 2 frontrunners
will be, making the standard Plurality strategy, the best-of-top-2
strategy not feasible.

What people do now, in that instance, is take a guess about the
frontrunners, and you could do that in Approval too. But we've
discussed lots of other strategies, for when it isn't obvious who
the 2 frontrunners will be.

For instance, it's been shown in several ways that one approximate
way to maximize your expectation is to ask, for each candidate,
would you be willing to have that person as president instead of
holding the election? If so, vote for him/her. If not, don't vote
for him/her.

Admittedly Approval requires more from the voter than Condorcet(wv)
does. You have to employ some sort of strategy. But it isn't correct
to say that you don't know what to do. Use one of the utility
expectation maximizing strategies that we've discussed. Some of
them are intended for when you _don't_ know who the frontrunners
will be, whom the tie or near-tie will be between if there is one.

So that uncertainty doesn't mean that you should give up, it just means
that you should use one of the strategies intended for that uncertainty.

It would be nice to have an oracle whom one could ask whom the
tie or near-tie will be between if there is one, and it would be
nice to not have to deal with strategy at all, as is the case with
Condorcet(wv) under plausible conditions. But one still knows what
to do in Approval, without having the information that we'd ideally
like to have.

Approval is just a different kind of method.
It's been shown, in a number of ways, that however you
guess your best way of voting in Approval, if everyone is doing that,
Approval will, by a few reasonabale approximations, maximize the number
of
people who consider the winner better than what they expected of the
election. With 0-info this takes the form of maximizing the number of
people who consider the winner above average. If preferences are
dichotomous, it takes the form of maximizing the number of voters
who consider the winner approvable instead of unacceptable.

That's true if people use any of the utility expectation maximizing
strategies, including following a direct intuitive hunch about how to vote. 
There's fairness in Approval's minimizing dissatisfaction in
the way that it does. You're saying you don't know the best way to
vote when it comes time to mark the candidates. Well, sometimes you
do, when it's an intuitive feeling, or when you feel sure who the
frontrunners will be. But even when you don't, you still know how
to _choose_ how to vote, before candidate-marking time. If you regard
your participation in the Approval election as beginning then, before
you actually get in the voting booth, then it can't be said that you
don't know what to do.

No one claims that Approval is strategy-free. But it doesn't have
the ridiculous strategy problems of Condorcet(margins). So, when you
say that Condorcet is more strategy-free than Approval, I take it
that you're talking about Condorcet(wv), and not Condorcet(margins),
which is a notorious strategic mess, with all the strategy problems
described by advocates of other voting systems.

I'm sending this partial reply now, and will immediately begin
a reply to the rest of the message.

Mike Ossipoff



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