[EM] Re: why ranking should be allowed for approved candidates only

[Russ Paielli]

Araucaria Araucana araucaria.araucana-at-gmail.com |EMlist| wrote:
> On 17 Apr 2005 at 14:28 UTC-0700, Russ Paielli wrote:

>>By only allowing the approved candidates to be approved, we can
>>significantly simplify the procedure for both the voter *and* the
>>equipment manufacturer. And we can do so at very little "cost" in
>>terms of voting "expressibility." If you are serious about actually
>>getting a new voting system adopted, I urge you to reconsider
>>allowing ranking of unapproved candidates.
> 
> 
> Hi Russ,
> 
> The strategic ability to rank below the cutoff is what enables DMC/RAV
> to discourage defection cases like this:
> 
>    27: A>>B
>    24: B (truncates >A preference)
>    49: C
> 
> Without that strategic disincentive, voters in this election might
> simply bullet vote and you end up with C.

For the votes you show, I figure that DMC/RAV picks C. If ranking of 
unapproved candidates is disallowed and the 27 A>>B votes are changed to 
just A, then C still wins. If we start with your votes and change the 24 
B votes to B>A, then A wins. If we start with the A>>B votes changed to 
A, then change the B votes to B>A, A wins.

I must be missing your point. According to my tallies for the four 
variations mentioned above, it makes no difference whether the 27 A>>B 
votes are changed to A only or vice versa. It is true that if the 24 B 
votes are "untruncated" to B>A, that gives the election to A. But so 
what? If A was the B voters *approved* second choice, they shouldn't be 
overly disappointed. What did I miss?

> If the ballot has to be simplified, 3 approved + 2 disapproved ranks
> are pretty simple.  This allows a voter to rank 3 choices as

I don't care for ballots that have arbitrary restrictions on how many 
candidates can be approved or disapproved or arbitrary conventions about 
which candidates are approved or disapproved. I also think that such 
arrangements will inevitably lead to confusion.

Granted, even if we only allow the approved candidates to be ranked, we 
will still have some confusion, but it just seems more "natural" and 
intuitive to me. Think of it as a generalization of Approval voting: you 
only select the approved candidates, except that now you can rank them 
too if you wish.

By the way, if you don't wish to rank them you can make them all equal. 
Then your vote will have the same effect it would have in Approval. If 
you think Approval is a good method, how can you complain about that?

>     1 2 3
>     1 2 4
>     1 4 5
> 
> to move up the approval cutoff.  Or as grades,
> 
>    A B C
>    A B F
>    A D F

I don't like grading schemes either. They just don't seem right to me 
for public elections.

--Russ