[EM] Fw: Range-Approval hybrid

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

Chris Benham wrote:
> Yes. I suggest that those "not rated" should be interpreted as
> disapproved and bottom-most rated.  Those candidates rated "zero"
> should be considered to be half-approved. Candidate X's approval
> opposition to Y should be X's approval score (including of course the
> half-approvals) plus half  X's approval score (likewise) on ballots
> that rate Y zero.  Y's  "Approval Oppostion" score refers to Y's 
> maximum approval opposition score from any X.

Here it seems you would have a choice analogous to wv versus margins in 
Condorcet. What you describe would be margins; wv would give no points 
to A nor B in the case of a tie.

>> "Normalization could be used if required, with either the voter 
>> specifying "absolutely worst" and "absolutely best" (setting the
>> range), or by the lowest and highest rated candidate having those
>> positions. So if a voter wants to say that he likes all the
>> candidates, but some are better than others, he could vote all
>> positive integers, whereas a McCain/Obama/Clinton voter could vote
>> McCain less than zero and the other two greater than zero. With
>> normalization, the contribution of
>> 
>> A: 1 pts. B: -1 pts.
>> 
>> to the raw scores would be the same as
>> 
>> A: 3 pts. B: 1 pt.
>> 
>> but would have a different effect regarding the approval component
>> (only A approved in the first case, both approved in the second)."
>> 
>> 
> I don't think I'm that keen on "normalization", but I don't really
> object to 'automating' the approval cutoff, so that ballots are
> interpreted as approving the candidates they rate above the mean of
> the ratings they've given (and half-approving those exactly at that
> mean).  I can imagine that others would object on various grounds,
> and the US voting reform enthusiasts who like FBC-complying methods
> like Range and Approval generally seem to prefer their voting methods
> to have  'manual transmission'.

The advantage of having zero set the boundary between approved and 
disapproved, instead of the mean doing so, is that you could express a 
general favor (or dislike) of politicians. For instance, if you think 
only one person's mostly decent and the rest are all corrupt (but some 
are more corrupt than others), you could vote the favored candidate 
above zero and the others below zero, whereas "above mean" would include 
some of the corrupt candidates as well.

I can understand that some would prefer the ballot to have, to use your 
own words, a manual transmission, but I think the concept of an explicit 
approval cutoff would be confusing to most. With the boundary at 0, you 
can just say, implicitly, "give those who you like points, and take 
points away from those you don't like".

When Approval voting has better strategies than plain commonsense 
approval, that's going to be a suboptimal strategy, but hopefully the 
voters are going to be mostly honest so that that's not much of a problem.