[EM] Approval and PR (was Request for help: complex election)

[Jan Kok]

I think a "problem" (you may not agree that it is a problem) with
Approval voting for choosing multiple winners, is that it is not
independent of clones.  I.e. if there are 10 candidates who are all very
similar, and all of them are acceptable to a majority, and there are
several other candidates who are highly valued by several minority
factions, then the winners of the Approval election will likely all be
from the 10 "clones".

Some people support proportional representation (PR) methods because
they want to force the set of winners to somehow "proportionally
represent" the various factions of the electorate.

Do you want to enforce diversity (in the US it's sometimes called
"affirmative action"), or do you want to do the opposite and create a
situation where the winners may all represent a single majority faction?

Although I have some sympathy for the idea of PR (because I belong to a
minor political party), I am also nervous about having representatives
of some _other_ minor parties get elected.  Some of them could be worse
(in my view) than the mainstream candidates.

So, a tendency of an election method to choose most winners from a
majority faction may or may not be a problem - it's a matter of values,
not a clear-cut matter of right or wrong.


Regarding the complex election, if you choose to use Approval with
differently weighted votes (for Council vs. ordinary members), then you
could resolve the question of number of winners by:

- Having a separate question to be voted on, which is whether there
should be 3 winners or 4.

- Don't choose a 4th winner if he has less than 50% Approval rating.

- Don't choose a 4th winner if the 4th place candidate's Approval rating
is "substantially lower" (pick a value, say 3/4) than the Approval
rating of the 3rd place candidate.

- Hold an election with 3 winners.  After those winners are known, hold
a second election to elect the 4th board member, but include None of the
Above as a "candidate", and if NOTA is elected, then the 4th seat is not
filled.

- Hold an election with 3 winners.  After the winners are known, let the
Council choose a 4th winner, perhaps with the option of leaving the seat
unfilled.

I can see problems with most of those schemes.  The last option looks
best to me.  It puts the "wisdom" of the Council to good use in choosing
the last board member, rather than having the Council's votes diluted
and duplicated by the general members' votes.

If you want to give the general members the option to veto the Council's
choice, then you could require that the Council make its choice from
candidates who got at least 20% Approval rating.

In small organizations, there is sometimes the problem that _no one_
wants to serve in a position.  What do you want to do if there are only
two candidates who want to run for the four open seats?  Maybe postpone
the election and call for more candidates?

You also need to plan how to resolve ties.  In small elections, ties
occur frequently.  With 10 candidates, you might have 3 candidates with
100% approval, and another 3 with 99% approval.  The Council could be
given the tiebreaking authority.


Cheers,
- Jan


> -----Original Message-----
> From: election-methods-electorama.com-admin at electorama.com
> [mailto:election-methods-electorama.com-admin at electorama.com] On
Behalf Of
> Eric Gorr
> Sent: Tuesday, March 09, 2004 10:33 AM
> To: Nikhil Nair; election-methods-electorama.com at electorama.com
> Subject: RE: [EM] Request for help: complex election
> 
> At 5:24 PM +0000 3/9/04, Nikhil Nair wrote:
> >While this is certainly interesting, and may well be a better system
than
> >typically used in common political elections, I don't think this is
the
> >solution I'm looking for.
> 
> This is mostly just a random idea fraught with many problems that I
> am sure people will point out, but why not run a modified version of
> an Approval election and take the top vote getters.
> 
> Since you wanted the board votes to count more (you mentioned 60-40)
> 
> for each candidate, take the total number of votes cast by the board
> and multiply it by .6. Also, for each candidate, take the total
> number of votes cast by non-board members and multiply it by .4.
> 
> Add these two totals together for the final total for each candidate.
> 
> Just a random idea...
> 
> 
> --
> == Eric Gorr ========= http://www.ericgorr.net ========= ICQ:9293199
===
> "Therefore the considerations of the intelligent always include both
> benefit and harm." - Sun Tzu
> == Insults, like violence, are the last refuge of the incompetent...
===
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