[EM] Re: majority rule criteria--alternative nomenclature

[Paul Kislanko]

 James Green-Armytage wrote in response to RLSuter, in part..

> >   Another example was a board meeting of a national
> >organization with a dozen or so people present. A
> >decision had to be made about where to hold the next
> >meeting. Approval voting was used, and it went well, with
> >everyone very satisfied with the process. An unusual
> >aspect of it was that instead of making a list of possible
> >meeting locations and then voting on them, locations
> >were suggested one at a time and approval votes were
> >taken after each name was suggested. Again, ranked
> >ballots would have made the process much more time
> >consuming and probably less satisfactory. Ranking
> >many different possible meeting locations also would
> >have been difficult for most people, whereas it was
> >fairly easy to decide whether to approve or disapprove
> >each proposed location. So I think ranked ballot voting
> >would have been overkill in that case and would have left
> >people less satisfied with the process if not also less
> >satisfied with the outcome.
> 
> 	Okay, interesting. The number of people is small enough 
> to do quick
> pairwise counts by hand, but the number of options is 
> unknown. Also, once
> again, majority rule doesn't seem particularly important in 
> this scenario,
> severe tactical voting is unlikely, and consensus is the goal. So,
> approval might make sense in that situation.

This is what I've suggested before - there is a "right" method for the right
context. A board meeting is like us saying at the end of a happy hour "well,
where should we meet next week?" Joe suggests Applebee's, because it is
close to home for Joe. If no one disagrees, it's an "approval vote". If
someone says "How about Friday's instead", now there are two options, and in
any case the venue for the next drinking bout is subject to an "approval"
style election. 

But there's an important context in the board-meeting and happy-hour
scheduling problem. Each member has veto power. The board can't "approve" a
meeting date/time that one required member can't attend because of a
conflict, and the happy-hour crowd will ask for another alternative if a
popular member of the group says "well, my ex-wife is the barmaid at that
Applebees so I won't go there even if you do."

Approval works in that kind of interactive environment, when iterated to
achieve maximum approval. In fact, in the board-meeting case, what is
desired is unanimity, not majority approval.