[Election-Methods] Steve--Accepting or rejecting in Approval

[Michael Ossipoff]

Steve Eppley speculated about what I mean by acceptance in Approval. But all 
I mean by it is voting yes on a candidate's offer to govern in one's behalf, 
by giving that candidate a vote in Approval.

And, by non-approval, I mean not doing that.

As I'd said before, it's the voter's own business why s/he accepts or 
rejects a candidate. Maybe s/he goes by principle and rejects candidates who 
aren't good enough, regardless of winnabililty. For instance, maybe s/he 
rejects those who are dishonest or corrupt, or significantly so. Candidates 
who don't deserve a vote. I often say that I myself usually vote that way. 
Or maybe s/he asks "How far down do I have to compromise, in choosing whom 
to accept?" So maybe it's situational acceptability that s/he goes by.

But, as I said, it's none of our business why a voter accepts or rejects a 
candidate. Just count hir ballot as voted.

Steve speculated that maybe some rank methods would do a better job of 
minimizing the number of people to whom the outcome is unacceptable, 
according to some unknown definition of "unacceptable", a definition 
different from my simple operational definition.

I doubt it, because the best rank methods, the ones that Steve and I 
advocate, are majoritarian methods, and they don't try to count what 
Approval counts.

I want to repeat, though, that I'd rather give the voters one of the best 
rank methods (such as SSD, MAM, MDDA, or MAMPO) than Approval, because those 
best rank methods make less demands on voters' judgement about what they 
strategically need to accept, or about what an acceptable candidate is. The 
progressives who vote Democrat have been down so long that it looks like up 
to them.

So I agree with Steve in preferring to give voters the best rank methods.

The differences between the best rank methods, the ones that I listed above, 
are negligible. It seems to me that Steve doesn't agree with me on that.

By the way, SSD was devised by Steve Eppley and me. Markus Schulze had 
previously posted about CSSD, and its equivalence with BeatpathWinner, but 
Steve and I were unaware of that. I'd thought that Markkus was describing a 
new variant of BeatpathWinner, and using "Schwartz set" with a different 
meaning. I probably didn't completely read those postings. Anyway, SSD is 
not CSSD, though they're equivalent in public elections. In small 
committees, they can give different results, and in small committees, (but 
not in public elections) SSD can violate clone-independence. But SSD has a 
more natural definition, with more obvious motivation and justification, and 
is the Condorcet version to propose for public elections.

I have no criticism of MAM, but I've encountered non-understanding when 
offering it to a local Greens organization. SSD makes no mention of cycles, 
but MAM must either mention them or indirectly refer to them, even if not by 
name. I personally feel that SSD has a more publicly understandable 
definition.
Mike Ossipoff