[EM] Dave on approval, ranked ballots

[Kevin Venzke]

Hi,

--- Abd ulRahman Lomax <abd at lomaxdesign.com> a écrit :
> >When no cycles are involved, Condorcet is 100% perfect. So I have to use
> >examples with cycles:
> 
> Kevin indicated later approval of Approval, so this is a technical comment:
> 
> Condorcet is perfect, absent cycles, if one believes that the winner of a 
> majority of pairwise contests should be the winner of the election. 
> However, if the winner of the election should be that candidate who is most 
> widely approved, and if voters vote sincerely and are willing to stretch 
> themselves a little (i.e., to approve a candidate other than their 
> favorite), Approval does a better job, and this is not merely in some 
> artificial, unlikely situation.
> 
> It's a question of election philosophy.

I don't agree with your perception. I don't believe an election method can
find the candidate who is "most widely approved" unless we really do assume that
voters are sincere, and use the same definition of "approve." Otherwise it seems 
to me that giving or withholding approval is just a strategic tool to get the
best outcome for oneself.

> "Perfect" implies "without flaw." I'd call the failure to elect a 
> compromise candidate a flaw.

When I said "100% perfect" I was talking about the method's ability to count
individual ballots in the manner intended by the voter.

I consider it arbitrary that you find Condorcet less able to pick a compromise
candidate. If voters in an Approval election do not approve below their favorite
candidate because they don't want to rank compromises equal to their favorite,
then Condorcet might well have picked a better compromise, since at least then
the voters could explicitly rank the compromises below their favorite.

I think it's a real possibility that Approval elections would turn out to look
much like Plurality elections.

Kevin Venzke



	

	
		
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