[EM] Majority Criterion, hidden contradictions

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 05:08 PM 11/9/2006, Paul Kislanko wrote:
>Regarding:
>"Approval satisfies Majority rule, but not the Majority Criterion as
>interpreted."

>A majority of us VOTERS do not agree with the statement, even those of us
>who might or might not agree with the interpretation.

This is entirely unintelligible.

>It fails the absolute criterion, and a few of us voters notice that. We DO
>NOT CARE if you "interpret" the criterion differently than its unambiguous
>expression.

Apparently, Paul thinks that he speaks for "a majority of voters."

The question has never been asked.

It is odd that Paul disagrees with the statement. It should not be 
controversial. Perhaps he has been confused by the discussion which 
came before. The statement quoted above does not present an alternate 
interpretation of the Majority Criterion, it assumes the standard 
interpretation as has been explained here, and the statement 
acknowledges the Majority Criterion is not satisfied in this way.

The essential statement here is the first clause.

Approval satisfies Majority Rule (at least more than other methods, 
it can still elect a plurality winner assuming that the rules allow it).

What Majority Rule means is that a decision made by society has been 
approved by a Majority. Under Robert's Rules, which are the basic, 
default rules by which democracy generally functions, decisions are, 
unless the rules provide otherwise, made by majority vote. That is, 
the question, which should be a single question if possible, is 
presented, and the Yes and No votes are compared, and if Yes 
prevails, the choice is so made. If no prevails, *no* action is taken 
from the motion, except that the status quo remains. Motions do not 
present alternate actions and ask the voters to choose between them. 
Rather, each action is presented separately and the voters vote Yes 
or No on them.

The theoretical situations which are the cause of considering 
Approval to fail the Majority Criterion involve more than one winner 
who has obtained a majority of votes. Technically, this is not true, 
by the way. The winner in Approval *always* has a plurality of votes. 
What happens in Approval is that there can be more votes than voters, 
and the Majority Criterion refers to voters, to a majority of voters, 
not to a majority of votes.

Now, if there is an Approval loser who received a vote from a 
majority of voters, then there must be a winner who received more 
votes and this is why the loser lost.

It is a general principle, accepted in election law, that if 
conflicting propositions in an election are both approved (majority 
Yes), then the one with the most Yes votes wins.

This is exactly Approval Voting, requiring only that we interpret the 
votes for candidates as answering Yes to the question, "Shall we 
accept the election of this candidate." And those who did not vote 
yes, but who did vote for someone else, are presumed as having voted No.

Approval is far more consistent with basic democratic process than is 
any other method that I know of. But most people are not aware of the 
general opinion among parliamentarians that plurality wins are 
improper. It's worth reading Robert's Rules, the recent revision, on 
the topic. The most democratic method of electing officers is to 
present the names for Yes or No votes. Then they note the problem: 
this can require many rounds. So a compromise is made, and full 
democracy is sacrificed for expendiency.

Oddly, though, they do not seem to have realized that this can be 
done on one ballot.

Range is a better method, to be sure, but not unless there is 
explicit acceptance of the result by the electorate. To be fully 
democratic, Range requires either a further step, or, what might be 
an interesting twist, an explicit approval cutoff, where the voter 
indicates the rating necessary for a candidate to be considered 
adequate, i.e., accepted. This shows what are Yes votes and what are No votes.

And if there is not candidate with a majority Yes, then the 
electorate has decided that, so far,

None of the Above.

And the office will remain with the status quo, perhaps, or will 
remain vacant, until there is further process.

(If the current office-holder is on the ballot, and does not receive 
majority approval as defined above, it could be considered an 
explicit rejection, and I'd say that the candidate should be removed 
from office. Law can and should provide caretaker provisions for 
necessary ad-interim functioning of a critical office.)