[EM] Re: approval strategy in DMC

[Araucaria Araucana]

Simmons, Forest  <simmonfo <at> up.edu> writes:

> 
> 
> Jeff Fisher recently opined that DMC voters would 
> likely adopt the strategy of approving all candidates that they considered 
> certain to be beaten pairwise by their Favorite.  This 
> would  put these candidates in a better position to doubly defeat the 
> candidates that might otherwise beat X.
>  
> But this strategy would also increase the chances of 
> doubly defeating their compromise Y.
>  
> The only time this strategy would be safe is 
> when  favorite X is so strong that compromise Y is not needed.
>  
> In that case, X probably doesn't need the over-kill, 
> but deserves to be the winner unless the other factions are united enough to 
> combine against X.
>  
> Forest

Hi Forest,

In connection with this, I've made a slight change on the DMC page on electowiki.

I've extended the definition somewhat:  the ballot is a combination of ordinal
ranking (equal ranks allowed) and approval rating.  The approval rating
information can be either binary approval (approved/not-approved) or
finer-grained cardinal ratings ([1,0,-1] or [100,99,...,1,0]).  I think this is
more of a difference in implementation than the method, since the initial
ordering is by total approval.

In the above case, a more graduated cardinal rating (say 100-0) would allow a
voter to approve weaker candidates with a low, but non-zero, rating.

Using the ordinal/ratings method I posted a few days ago, the ballot would not
be substantially more complicated than a plain approval-cutoff ballot.

Q