[EM] Efforts to improve on CR's strategy

[bql at bolson.org]

On May 17, 2004, at 9:04 AM, Ken Johnson wrote:

> I was, until recently, a fanatical advocate of Approval. I tried to
> demonstrate by empirical simulation the superiority of Approval over
> rank methods, based on the criterion that the election method should
> maximize "social utility" as defined by sincere CR. (See my earlier
> post in Election-methods digest, Vol 1 #597, Message 4.)
> Unfortunately, it didn't turn out the way I expected. In a
> single-issue election with many candidates, Approval exhibited abysmal
> performance, worse than all other methods (including Plurality). So I
> gave up my crusade. Oh well.

That's odd. Approval turned out pretty well in my sims.

http://bolson.org/voting/graph/v10000/e0_17.png
http://bolson.org/voting/graph/v10000/c06.png

I call it "Acceptance". It turned out better than IRV and under some
conditions better than Borda ("Ranked Vote" on the graph).

Sure, it lost to the rest of the systems, but not by as much as One
Vote. It's close enough that, if limited by technology or other
resource availability, I'd be perfectly happy to settle for
Approval/Acceptance voting.

Brian Olson
http://bolson.org/