[Election-Methods] Bucklin

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 01:16 PM 12/9/2007, Jonathan Lundell wrote:

>Approval fixes Florida 2000 nicely, though, only because Nader had no
>serious chance of election, so a Nader voter wouldn't have hurt
>Nader's chances (zero) by approving Gore as well.

Right. In a two-party system, any possible difficulty for the voter is rare.

>In a different election profile, though, an approval voter faced with
>a "good-bad-worse" choice where all three candidates are viable is
>forced to strategize. Having approved "good", my approval of "bad"
>could be decisive in bad beating good--which leads me to prefer 
>later- no-harm methods: I want to be able to both express my preference for
>"good" over "bad", and at the same time "bad" over "worse". I can't do
>that with approval.

Three viable candidates is rare. If so, the safest vote would depend 
on preference strengths. If the "bad" is actually midrange in 
preference, the safest vote could be to approve the top two. But the 
more powerful vote is exclusive for the top one. It can be a tossup.

Look, suppose it was Plurality. How would you vote in a three-way?

I'd say that the choice is not easy, but easier with Approval than 
with Plurality. Since I'm not proposing replacing Condorcet methods 
with Approval, it's really a non-issue for me. Approval is better 
than Plurality, yet it takes the same ballot and the same counting 
and the same equipment. It's a no-brainer.

Just Count All the Votes!

Then we can debate refinements!