[Election-Methods] RE : Re: Improved Approval Runoff

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 01:22 PM 8/20/2007, Kevin Venzke wrote:
> > And method which allows equal ranking and truncation is
> > "Condorcet/Approval."
>
>By "And" did you mean "Any"?

Lucky guess!

>I don't think either equal ranking or truncation are necessary rules for
>Condorcet//Approval. The method could require a strict ranking but
>feature an explicitly placed cutoff.

I did not make the condition described a necessary one, merely a 
sufficient one.

However, any method which requires a strict ranking is going to 
discard ballots that would otherwise be counted. Requiring of voters 
what is not necessary, and, in this case, what may be entirely 
arbitrary, is, in my view, offensive, chipping away at the 
independence and freedom of the voter, which is a cornerstone of 
democracy. (Of course, it may not literally be chipping away what was 
never there in the first place, but, actually, in direct democracy, 
where voting is by voice or show of hands, "overvoting" generally 
receives little or no notice. I have never seen that it was 
explicitly prohibited. So something was taken away when secret 
ballots were used, the right to vote for more than one.

In a ranked method with sufficient ranks, it would be the voter's 
choice whether or not to equal rate, it is not made necessary by the 
method. Truncation is, of course, equivalent to equal-rating bottom, generally.

(Yes/No Approval *could* be totalled and calculated as Average Vote. 
For the same reasons that I oppose the use for election purposes of 
Average Range (currently the standard CRV proposal, on the web page), 
I would not recommend that. It reverses standard election practice.

(Often overlooked is that Approval *is* used in public elections, for 
resolving conflicting Ballot Questions. Such Questions do not pass 
unless they gain a majority Yes. If more than one passes, the one 
with the most Yes votes wins. This, of course, is quite equivalent to 
an Approval election with majority Yes required to win. Abstentions 
are not counted for the matter of whether or not the question passes, 
but they are the same as No votes for the question of which passing 
Question should be adopted.)

>By the way, electing from the Condorcet top tier using approval would
>be called Smith//Approval or Schwartz//Approval depending on which top
>tier is used. I don't typically consider these methods because they are
>more complicated than Condorcet//Approval and can't be adjusted to
>satisfy FBC.

A very simple method, however, is to run an approval election, but 
the ballot includes a "Favorite" or "Preferred" indicator. When this 
is not used for determining the winner, I called this method "A+." 
(It could be used for informational purposes, such as studying 
election method performance, and it would also determine, for 
example, public campaign financing and dealing with other aspects of 
current law that presume plurality elections. If the latter, 
overvoting on the Favorite would not affect the election, but it 
could affect campaign financing, the vote might be discarded for that 
purpose -- which I dislike.)

However, if it is used for determining the winner, a basic approach 
would be to determine the Approval winner first. For this purpose, a 
Favorite vote and a simple vote ("approval") would be counted the 
same. Then the election would be analyzed by preference. If 
preference is considered, does any candidate beat the Approval 
winner? If not, the Approval winner prevails.

If so, then various paths are possible. My preferred one would be 
that there is a runoff between the Approval winner and the preference 
winner. I propose quite the same with Range, and if Range resolution 
is sufficient, a special Favorite indicator may not be necessary.

What this does is to cause the method, overall, to satisfy the 
Majority Criterion, since a maintained preference of the majority 
will prevail. However, a weak preference of the majority might not 
prevail, because it might not be maintained in the runoff, for 
various reasons. Thus SU can be maximized, while permitting the 
majority to confirm its consent to the loss of its initial 
preference. Or, of course, the majority could effectively say, No, 
given the results and what we now know, we'd prefer to have our favorite.

Majority rule. Which will ordinarily, in a healthy society, choose 
the SU maximizer when it can. People *will* give up a small 
preference where it will bring broader satisfaction, it is routine.