[Election-Methods] Improved Approval Runoff

[Dave Ketchum]

On Tue, 21 Aug 2007 21:59:49 -0400 Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
> At 10:48 PM 8/20/2007, Kevin Venzke wrote:
> 
>>That's still pretty strange... What about IRV with equal rankings allowed?
> 
WHAT do the vote counters do that maybe can claim equal strength for such 
rankings, when others are not doing such?
     Joe ranks A and B at top - give same count to each as the one Joe 
would otherwise select and they get an advantage.
> 
> Well, I suggested it long ago as a simple improvement. Voters can 
> essentially vote it as Approval if they want.
> 
> In an Approval election, if all the candidates you approve are not 
> going to win, your vote has been wasted. (Unless, of course, it is 
> Asset Voting or some PR scheme). Having a fallback vote makes sense.
> 
> However, I wouldn't personally choose IRV as the ranked method to 
> use. Why in the world not use a Condorcet method, if you want ranked?
      Now you get away from IRV's failures.
      Condorcet can and does give equal power to equal ranking (only thing 
special is that A=B means they are equal - they get fully normal 
relationship to higher and lower ranks).
> 
> The trick that I've proposed to make Range methods MC compliant could 
> also be used with IRV. Let the IRV election play out, then reanalyze 
> the ballots fully and see if anyone beats the IRV winner pairwise. 
> Since you need only compare the pairs including the IRV winner, the 
> counting is simplified. This would detect the Condorcet winner 
> (though it might detect more than one candidate beating the IRV 
> winner -- but that should be rare, since IRV does usually pick the 
> Condorcet winner unless there are a lot of candidates.)
> 
> You could either award the victory to the one who beats the pairwise 
> winner -- in some fashion -- or hold a runoff. A real runoff is the 
> ultimate challenge, the proof that the winner is acceptable to a 
> majority, at least comparatively. (A true test would be a pure Yes/No 
> ratification.)
-- 
  davek at clarityconnect.com    people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek
  Dave Ketchum   108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY  13827-1708   607-687-5026
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