[EM] Yes/No Voting

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

There's been discussion here about 3-level points systems, and so
I'm sure that Y/N has been discussed here, and that I'm probably
repeating things already said.

An advantage of Approval over CR is that Approval doesn't require a
ballot different from the existing one. An advantage of CR over
Approval is that CR is familiar to people, whereas some mistakenly
feel that Approval violates 1-person-1-vote.

But someone wrote to me suggesting a method that has both of those
advantages: Yes/No voting:

Each voter may give a candidate "Yes", "No", or nothing. A candidate's
No votes are subtracted from his Yes votes, and the result is his
score. The candidate with highest score wins.

That's equivalent to CR, with -1, 0, 1. Which is equivalent to
0, 1, 2 CR. Which of course is strategically equivalent to Approval.

Every county already has balloting equipment that supports voting
yes or no on a list of things. People are familar with it and won't
call it a violation of 1-person-1-vote. Moreover, many people would
very much like to give negative votes.

Some would suggest disqualifying anyone who gets more No than Yes.
But he can't win unless everyone gets a negative score.

Some would suggest disqualifying anyone who gets No from a majority.
But he can't win unless everyone's score is negative.

Those added requirements are unnecessary. They'd complicate strategy
if we took them into account, but we could safely ignore them in
strategy, and so I wouldn't object to them if people wanted them.
But I'd propose Y/N without them, for simplicity.

Mike Ossipoff




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