[EM] "scored condorcet", etc

[Gervase Lam]

Some quick replies here before I go to bed.

> Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 15:19:17 -0800
> From: rob brown <rob at karmatics.com>
> Subject: Re: [EM] "scored condorcet", etc

> I also have problems with approval in that, whether or not it is true,
> it
> *feels* like someone who is approving more candidates than another
> voter is
> having more say. I think people have a problem with that, and will
> never
> accept it for that reason.

Well, there have been proposals on this list of methods where the input
are ranked ballots and the output is an approval score.  Because really,
in order to determine what a voter's best approval strategy is, the
voter at the very least needs to have a ranking of the candidates in
mind if not cardinal ratings for the candidates.

> 3) having results that the public can easily view and feel that they
> understand the main gist of what happened. (this also applies to
> pre-election polling results)

> 5) having the tabulation method easily explainable to average people
> who are
> not necessarily great at math and logic.

Well, apart from Borda, which I basically knew of before I started
reading this mailing list, the first ranking method(s) I first
understood was Condorcet, though this took me a while because I had to
work out how it worked not knowing where I could find a definition for
it.

For similar reasons, it took me longer still to understand IRV.  To me,
the way IRV results are tabulated are more complicated than the way
pairwise results are tabulated.

> 4) having no strategic advantage to voting late, after you have seen
> how
> others have voted. This could allow real elections (as opposed to just
> things like web based polls) to happen over a longer period of time
> than a
> single day, which could make them far less costly and far more
> convenient to
> voters.

Well, the relatively recent elections in India took over a month to do.
As security was a problem and India is a big and highly populous
country, each group of regions in the country had their voting stations
open on different days.  And India uses plurality.  So I think this is
not a problem.

However, I think India keeps the result of each region under lock and
key until all the regions have finished voting.  Therefore, you won't
get the situation of being able to use strategic voting as a result of
voting late.

I'm sure there are other countries in the world where the election is
spread over many days with each region in the country voting on
different days.

Thanks,
Gervase.