[EM] Addendum to approval voting

[Jan Kok]

On 4/28/06, Antonio Oneala <watermark0n at yahoo.com> wrote:
> There could be an option on the ballot, that a voter may or may not mark, to
> choos one of the candidates a "favorite".  Those with "favorite" vote would
> then be empowered to unrank any of the candidates that the person had
> ranked.  The obvious situation in which this would work is when believe that
> you may be hurting your favorite by ranking one of the other candidates;
> therefore, if your vote caused them to lose, they can unrank the votes that
> caused them to lose and win.


I'm not sure what you mean by "Those with "favorite" vote would then
be empowered to unrank any of the candidates that the person had
ranked."  Are you saying that after the ballots are counted, a losing
candidate could withdraw the second choices of his supporters?  For
example, if we have these ballots:
31 Left
5 Left>Center
5 Center>Left
22 Center
5 Center>Right
5 Right>Center
30 Right
(Everyone marks his first choice as Favorite.)  Initially, Center has
42 votes and wins.  So candidate Left can withdraw the 5 Center votes
from the Left>Center ballots?  So then Left becomes the winner.  Can
Center then withdraw the 5 Left votes from the Center>Left votes, and
the 5 Right votes from the Center>Right ballots, recapturing the
winning position?  At that point, Right could could threaten to take
votes away from Center, but would probably not want to do so because
Right would end up the winner.

How about this:
32 Left
5 Left>Center
5 Center>Left
21 Center
5 Center>Right
5 Right>Center
30 Right
Initially Left wins.  Center can take 5 votes away from Left, and
Center takes the lead.  Left doesn't dare retaliate because Right
would then win.  Right could take votes away from Center, but Center
could retaliate and cause Right to win.

> What do you think?  Is it a good idea?

I don't know.  It makes my head spin.  Since the candidates have some
control over each others votes, it looks like a variation of Asset
Voting.

Cheers,
- Jan