[EM] Approval voting under fire #1 (James)

[James Green-Armytage]

whoops, this one should have been first, as the title (#1) suggests!

>I used to write to Richie
>about IRV's faults, and about how Approval & Condorcet
>were better. 

	By the way, when we talked about these issues, Rob said that he actually
has proposed approval voting to people when voting equipment change was
not an option, although without success. (He mentioned New Mexico as an
example.)
	Myself, while I agree that approval is better than plurality, and is made
very attractive by the fact that new equipment is not necessary, I am not
convinced that it is better than IRV. I haven't discussed this with anyone
on the list, as it is a new idea for me, but let's say that these are the
sincere preference rankings:

23: right, left#1, left#2
22: right, left#2, left#1
29: left#1, left#2, right
26: left#2, left#1, right

	In this example, left#1 is a clear Condorcet winner. He also happens to
win IRV, although it is not too hard to concoct a fairly similar example
where the IRV and Condorcet winners are different. 
	However, what would happen if these sincere preference rankings went into
an approval election? Would all of the 'left' voters approve both 'left'
candidates? In that case, it would be a tie. Would all of the 'left'
voters bullet vote? In that case, 'right' would win.
	It seems like a pretty severe chicken game between the left voters who
prefer left#1 and those who prefer left#2. Unlike IRV, this is a chicken
game with no sincere vote to take refuge in, because it is not clear
whether a sincere vote would be a bullet vote or a double vote. It looks
like the winner will either be the right candidate, or the left candidate
who has more bullet-voting supporters. I'm really not comfortable with
this; it seems like the outcome is being decidedly entirely by voter
strategy, while the actual preferences for the candidates takes a
secondary role. What worries me isn't just that the method doesn't
guarantee that the Condorcet winner is chosen -- the problem is that I
don't see any particular reason why the Condorcet winner would be chosen
rather than one of the other candidates. Does the amount of candidates who
bullet vote rather than double vote reflect the relative strength of
preference for the candidate? I don't think that this is necessarily so.
Maybe I am missing something.
	Anyway, approval has its good points, and IRV has its nightmares, but are
things clear-cut enough to say that approval is definitely better?
	So, if we can get straight to Condorcet in one leap, and faster than we
could if we could any other way, I say great! But if there are going to be
other methods in the early days to warm people up the ideas involved, I
would be happy to see IRV among these as well as approval.

	Again, I would like to see all of these methods being advocated at once
and catching on wherever they catch on. Rather than raining on CVD's
little parade, and since they show no signs of moving beyond IRV for
single winner purposes, my desire is to see people organizing for
Condorcet and other good methods in areas where plurality and two round
runoff are still the norm. Also, I would like there to be an organization
which educated the public about voting systems in a more honest and
open-minded way, in contrast to the advocacy of CVD which continually
focuses all information into praise of a small group of strictly defined
goals.

respectfully,
James