[EM] Re: A summable Approval variant for solid majorities

[Kevin Venzke]

Ted,

Thanks for your reply.  I don't believe you've posted here before.

--- Ted Stern <stern at cray.com> a écrit : 
> > 1. The voter rates all candidates either Preferred, Approved, or
> > Disapproved.  2. If one or no candidates are preferred or approved by
> > a majority of the voters, then the candidate preferred or approved by
> > the most voters is elected.  3. Else elect the most preferred
> > candidate among those preferred or approved by a majority.
> 
> Interesting method.
> 
> What about simply using Approval to break ties in Condorcet?

I could live with it.  I think WV methods are good enough, and have a simpler
ballot.  I don't really trust that voters will place a cutoff intelligently.

> That is, use a ranked ballot with indication of approval; e.g.,
> 
>      K > D >> B
> 
> Pick the unambiguous Condorcet winner if it exists.
> 
> If not, drop the candidate with lowest approval and try again.

One method I like is AER, where the least approved candidate is dropped until
someone is a majority favorite.  This doesn't pass Condorcet, but it doesn't
require the notion of pairwise contests.  (Incidentally, I suggest that every
candidate be considered "approved" on a ballot except for the truncated ones.)

> Iterate over the Schwartz set if you prefer ...

I don't think this would make any difference in the result.

> I haven't seen criteria assessments of this variant, even though I think I've
> seen it mentioned (indirectly) on several sites.

The problem is that criteria are not usually written with approval cutoffs in
mind.  For instance, it's not possible to say whether a ranked method with an 
approval cutoff passes Clone Independence, unless you first make assumptions about
whether or how each ballot's cutoff may be affected by the introduction of a new
candidate.

> I think the idea you're after is that rankings of disapproved candidates
> shouldn't be counted as highly.

My idea is to improve Approval while keeping as many of its advantages as possible:
Summability, hand-countability, weak FBC, Participation, and straight-forward strategy.

MAFP sacrifices some Participation, and complicates strategy for those who want
to worry about it.  In return, a majority-strength solid coalition has a way of
voting which ensures they will win, without requiring all of their voters to vote
equally for all of the coalition's candidates (and thus letting the race be decided
by defecting voters).

Of course defection could still be useful.  Consider:

49 Bush
24 Kerry  (supposed to vote Kerry>Dean)
27 Dean>Kerry

Kerry is elected.  I wonder if this is considered "offensive strategy."  The Kerry
voters' incentive to not ditch Dean is just that if Dean voters ditch Kerry, too,
then Bush will win.  Hopefully both sides will prefer to take each other to the
"second round" and win or lose honestly.

Kevin Venzke
stepjak at yahoo.fr



	

	
		
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