[EM] Re: proper Borda implementation

[Curt Siffert]

On Sep 25, 2004, at 1:49 PM, Dgamble997 at aol.com wrote:

> In a message dated 24/09/2004 20:06:37 GMT Standard Time, 
> election-methods-electorama.com-request at electorama.com writes:
>
>
>
> [truncated borda ballots]
>
>  Any thoughts as to which is better?
>
>  What do people who advocate Borda as a serious method (i.e. Donald 
> Saari) say you should do in situations like this?
>
>  If there is a consensus of opinion amongst Borda supporters as to 
> what you do regarding truncated ballots then a proper implementation 
> of Borda will follow that consensus.
>
>  David Gamble----
>

I believe that's why he was asking here.  That said, I don't think 
there's a right answer.  I've looked into this before and Borda 
advocates usually say that Borda requires full ballots, end of story.

There's also a third option - take the points that would generally be 
awarded to the unlisted candidates, and re-allocate them to the 
candidates you've ranked.  And there, either give an equal amount to 
each candidate, or allocate them proportionally.  And then there's the 
matter of choosing the proportion.  If you rank 3 candidates out of 
five, would the proportion be 3:2:1, or 5:4:3 ?

It's the same flaw as always with rated ballots, there's never a 100% 
right way to normalize things.  You're either choosing accurate voter 
intent, or equal ballot power.  But out of all the above choices, I'd 
probably pick the 3:2:1 option.  I'm just thinking of the guy that only 
cares about two candidates in a 100-candidate election; one he loves 
and one he sorta likes, the rest irrelevant .  He'd probably want his 
power to be allocated 2:1 rather than 100:99.

Curt