[EM] publicly acceptable election methods

[Russ Paielli]

Folks,

I realize that this email list is intended for a wide-ranging technical 
discussion of election methods, and far be it from me to try to 
discourage "brainstorming" for innovative new ideas. Let me just 
suggest, however, that it would be useful to distinguish between 
election methods that could be publicly acceptable within our lifetimes 
and those that almost certainly will not be.

I believe that Approval is simple enough to be publicly acceptable. IRV 
may or may not be. As I have pointed out before, IRV will have serious 
implementation problems due to lack of "summability," but at least its 
rules are relatively simple, with only minor variations, and no great 
factions exist within its core advocates.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Condorcet as it is currently 
understood. Imagine how befuddled the public will be about "dropping 
defeats" (as opposed to the much simpler idea of dropping candidates). 
Do we use Schulze, Ranked Pairs, or some other variation? Then there's 
the "margins vs. winning votes" issue, which is enough all by itself to 
derail any potential progress once the intolerant dogmatists get 
involved. (Will Mike declare a jihad on Condorcet if the public prefers 
margins?)

I've also been reading a lot here about "lottery" methods. I have the 
utmost respect for those who are discussing them, most of whom are 
probably smarter than me, but I must confess that I don't have a clue 
about what they are trying to accomplish. I think it is safe to say, 
nevertheless, that any method that involves a "lottery" is publicly 
unacceptable. We don't need a lottery now, so why should we adopt a 
system that needs one? That's what the public will want to know.

If Condorcet is ever to be publicly acceptable, I think it needs to be 
simplified. As most of you know, I recently proposed a 
Condorcet-Approval hybrid method that has actually been suggested before 
here on EM. It is much simpler than traditional Condorcet algorithms, 
and I think it could possibly be effective *and* publicly acceptable.

Let me briefly restate the idea:

The voters rank the candidates and also specify an Approval cutoff. The 
CW wins if one exists, otherwise the least approved candidate is 
repeatedly eliminated until a CW is obtained.

That's it, folks! Two sentences. Now, *that* could be simple enough to 
be publicly acceptable. No complicated algorithms understandable only by 
Ph.D.s are needed. If only the approved candidates are allowed to be 
ranked, then it becomes even simpler to implement because then the voter 
need not even specify a separate approval cutoff. If no equal rankings 
are allowed -- simpler yet. These are all tradeoffs to be discussed, but 
regardless of the final version it will still be much simpler than, say, 
Schulze or Ranked Pairs.

I would really like to know what the exceptional folks here on EM think 
about this proposal. Some of you have provided some feedback already, 
and I certainly appreciate it. However, I don't sense any excitement 
about it, and I'd like to know why not. What is the problem with it?

If this proposal is seriously flawed, then I seriously doubt that 
Condorcet has a chance of ever being used in large-scale public 
elections in my lifetime.

--Russ