[EM] RE: simplifying ballots

[Abd ulRahman Lomax]

At 04:51 PM 8/17/2005, Simmons, Forest wrote:
>Abd ulRahman Lomax proposed:
>
>The proposal is that the ballots might be counted first as ordinary
>approval. If a majority appears from this process for a given candidate in
>a single-winner election, the candidate would be elected. If not, then the
>ballots would be retabulated as fractional approval, i.e., if you voted for
>N candidates, your vote would be assigned as 1/N for each of them, and then
>it is ordinary Asset voting from that point.
>
>Forest replies:
>
>This seems like another good possible use of simple ballots.
>
>I would like to point out that on this EM list, customary usage would 
>substitute "counted cumulatively" for your phrase "retabulated as 
>fractional approval."

While technically Fractional Approval is Cumulative Voting, with the 
restriction that votes are of the form 1/N, where N is the number of votes 
cast, the total always being 1 (or 0 if no vote is cast), Fractional 
Approval is so-called because it *is* Approval Voting in the first phase 
and only becomes Fractional Approval if no majority winner appears. 
Fractional Approval, i.e., Cumulative Voting, for public elections, is a 
bad idea, particularly in single-winner elections, because it weakens the 
effective vote of the voter if the voter casts more than one ballot. 
Further, in Cumulative Voting, if the voter has, say, 8 votes, which 
reduces to 8 times 1/8 vote, the voter can cast any number of these for any 
candidate. In Fractional Approval the voter could cast only votes of the 
form 1/N. The ballot is binary for each candidate, the calculation converts 
the votes into fractions based on the total votes cast on the ballot.

Dividing Approval Votes like that would be a very bad idea in a simple 
Plurality election, and this analysis shows why:

(this may well be obvious to many election methods people, but for the record:)

In any non-Asset election, in the end, the only vote that counts is the 
vote cast for a winner. Any other vote is wasted, actually. If the voter 
knew how everyone else was going to vote, the voter might as well abstain 
(or stay home) if the voter is not going to vote for a winner. It would not 
affect the outcome. If a vote is split, at most one of the fractions will 
go to the winner. So the voting power of the voter has been diluted.

This is really the same argument as is used to show that Approval does not 
give a voter more than one vote. If the voter votes for two candidates, 
this is equivalent (in the vote margin sense) to abstaining from the 
pairwise contest between those two candidates, and voting for one of them 
in every other pairwise contest. In no case does the voter get two 
*effective* votes (in single-winner, there can be only as many effective 
votes as there are winners.)

But in Asset Voting, no votes are wasted, until, perhaps, the bitter end. 
(Theoretically, in Asset Voting used for Proportional Representation, no 
vote need be wasted at all. Every vote ends up electing a candidate, and 
all elected candidates are elected with ultimate votes that are within one 
vote of the quota. So every voter will end up thinking "My vote counted." 
The only reason this would not happen is if a candidate refused to reassign 
his or her votes or excess votes. And then the voter might feel that a vote 
had been wasted (had no effect on the outcome), but something new would be 
present: someone to blame and something to do about it. Which is don't vote 
for that candidate again, vote for someone more trustworthy....

>Also on this list is has been pointed out from time to time that just as 
>Approval is strategically equivalent to Range Voting, so Plurality is 
>strategically equivalent to Cumulative Voting, now also called Fractional 
>Approval.

The vote reassignment step is crucial to Asset Voting, and totally changes 
the picture with regard to strategy. Actually, strategy becomes useless in 
Asset Voting, you just vote for the candidate or candidates whom you trust 
the most.

Asset Voting, per se, was invented by Warren Smith, though it strongly 
resembles delegable proxy (which seems to have been invented independently 
by a number of people, I know I did not get it from anyone else). Mr. Smith 
is, however, at this time promoting Range Voting. Range Voting is a more 
flexible form of Approval, and Range Voting could also be used in an Asset 
form. But I think that the Asset trick makes the substantially increased 
complexity of a Range ballot unnecessary.

(It's a "trick" in the context of "election methods" because it takes the 
hard part -- dealing with a failure of enough candidates reaching the quota 
(one candidate getting a majority in single-winner) without allowing a mere 
plurality winner -- and converts it to a deliberative process, which is a 
bit like waving a magician's wand at the problem. And the magic is called 
"intelligence," which is not going to be present in any election method, 
per se.)