[EM] attempt of a grand compromise

[James Green-Armytage]

Dear Jobst,

	I'm glad that you have been thinking about the cardinal pairwise
principle and have found it to have useful properties. I agree that a
variation with approval cutoffs would simplify the ballot, while probably
keeping many of the anti-strategic benefits, etc. I did actually propose
an approval cutoff variation on June 8th; I hope that it isn't too
conceited of me to point this out.
http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2004-June/013241.html
	Your proposal seems similar to mine, except of course that it uses the
river method, which I have no problem with. Are there any other major
differences which I am not seeing? I do notice that you have filled in a
lot of the fine details, which is useful.
	Anyway, I would be happy to have an ongoing discussion of the relative
merits of the approval cutoff version of weighted pairwise versus the
cardinal ratings version.
>
>Because of step 2, the method is a variant of James' Cardinal Weighted
>Pairwise and is thus robust against compromising and burying.

	Well, I have spent a lot of time trying to argue that it makes the
burying strategy a less severe problem, but I could still be proven wrong.
(If I am, however, I will probably be rather upset.) I haven't really
looked that much at how it affects the compromising strategy, since I
don't regard the compromising strategy to be a serious problem in
Condorcet-efficient methods. So, if cardinal pairwise is more resistant to
compromising, it is news to me. 

>COMPARISON WITH OTHER METHODS:
>Although it has the same appealing robustness to strategic voting, it
>uses much simpler ballots than Cardinal Weighted Pairwise, hence it is
>much easier to tally manually. Since it uses the notion of "approval"
>instead of "rating" or "utility", it is also easier to tell whether a
>ballot is filled out sincerely.

	Hmm, well, you've often asked me to define sincerity in cardinal-weighted
pairwise, so I suppose I should ask you for a definition of sincerity in
this approval-weighted pairwise method, since you think that it will be
easier. Is it rigorous enough to say that candidates above the line are
those whom you "approve" of? I doubt it... and if so, then it seems that
my definition of sincere cardinal ratings based on "gut reaction" would be
acceptable as well. : )
>
all my best,
James