[EM] Condorcet-Approval hybrid method

[Russ Paielli]

Daniel Bishop wrote:
> Russ Paielli wrote:
> 
>> Daniel Bishop dbishop-at-neo.tamu.edu |EMlist| wrote:

> For example, consider an election with 12 candidates.  Your ballot might 
> look like
> 
> _1_ Favorite
> _2_ Good #1
> _2_ Good #2
> _2_ Good #3
> _3_ Tolerable #1
> _3_ Tolerable #2
> _3_ Tolerable #3
> _3_ Tolerable #4
> _4_ Bad #1
> _4_ Bad #2
> _4_ Bad #3
> _5_ Evil

I still fail to see why you think you need the equal rankings. If you 
really rate a group of candidates exactly equal, why would you care 
which order you put them in? Just flip a coin. Or perhaps you think you 
gain some strategic advantage by ranking them equal -- which is 
precisely one reason I lean toward disallowing it.

>> And why would you even rank/approve the last candidate?
> 
> 
> First of all, I disagree that "ranking" and "approving" should be 
> equivalent.  A better approach is to have the voter mark their least 
> favorite approved candidate, and give an approval vote to everyone at 
> that rank or better.  That forces the approval votes to be consistent 
> with the rank list, while still letting a voter say "I don't approve of 
> either Bad or Evil, but I'd rather have Bad than Evil".
> 
> The point of ranking a last candidate is exactly the same as ranking a 
> first candidate: to express a preference.  But your proposal makes 
> voting much harder for people with a strong last preference.

You have a point. I am open to the idea of allowing ranking past the 
approval cutoff point. The voter interface would be a bit more 
complicated but perhaps not too bad.

--Russ