[EM] Warren: MDDA vs RV, 10/16/05

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

Warren--

You wrote:

See, Ossipoff has indicated he felt Range voting was best for the public, 
but
privately he preferred MDDA.  (I do not know if that is still his stance.)

I reply:

I believe that it's a sure thing that RV is the best public proposal.

Approval would be a good one too, but it triggers the fallacious 
1-person-1-vote objection. Maybe Approval could be presented in such a way 
as not to trigger that objection. Maybe introduce Approval as a point 
system, or as Set Voting, where each person has one vote for one set of 
candidates over another, by indicating his/her favorite set.

But, even without the 1p1v misunderstanding, Approval is new. RV is 
well-known and popular, because we've all been asked to rate things up to 
10. I suggest that 0 to 10 RV would be the best RV proposal for that reason, 
because of balloting difficulty for 0 to 100, and because 0 to 100 might 
seem like more work, or too elaborate.

Still, if the 1p1v problem misunderstanding can be avoided, Approval has the 
advantage of being nothing other than Plurality done right. The most minimal 
change from Plurality. The change consists onliy of two new words on the 
ballot: Where it says "Vote for 1", it could say instead "Vote for 1 or 
more".

So, though my best guess is that RV is the most winnable public proposal, 
there's a case for Approval too, maybe.

And RV would probably give somewhat better results than Approval would, in 
our current public elections.

So, RV or Approval would be the best methods to propose.

Compred to Condorcet, MDDA is briefly-defined. But it's one of innumerable 
ways to count rank ballots, and that gives it a big acceptance disadvantage 
against RV or Approval. There's only one way to count RV or Approval 
ballots: Add them up.

What about results, disregarding winnability? I don't know. Yes, maybe MDDA 
would give better results, due to more ways of voting, as compared to 
Approval or RV. Yes that's quite possible. I certainly wouldn't say that 
it's necessary to have MDDA instead  of RV or Approval. Far from it. But 
MDDA might well give results that are somewhat better. As I said, I don't 
know.

Maybe ranking can improve on RV and Approval. It's a question that should be 
looked at, and I'm going to discuss it more in a subsequent posting. I 
discuss the subject by asking the question and discussing it.

Yes, each rank method has its own elaborate strategy considerations, and to 
find out if ranking can improve on Approval and RV, MDDA's strategy must be 
discussed.

Mike Ossipoff

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