[EM] Classifying 3-cand scenarios. LNHarm methods again.

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 11:55 PM 4/18/2010, Dave Ketchum wrote:
>There are many elections with only one reasonable choice - such as a
>good qualified worker trying for re-election.  Here even FPP would be
>fine, and we hope for nothing that makes voting unreasonably labor
>intensive.
>
>The many with two reasonable choices are also doable with FPP, though
>needing TTR for help when losers prevent FPP from seeing a majority.

Or other advanced method. What is often overlooked in the discussion 
of voting methods, due to the emphasis on deterministic methods that 
always find a winner with one ballot, is that runoff voting provides 
the voters with an opportunity to gain information and use it in the 
runoff. If runoffs are special elections, the voters will tend to be 
more informed. Runoffs make FPTP work much better, because, 
obviously, if a majority, just voting for one, vote for a single 
candidate, that's a deserving winner! (Sure, there are possible 
exceptions, but that doesn't break the general rule. It just means 
that there might be room for improvement.)

When representatives are being elected, rather than office-holders, 
i.e., executives, vote-for-one becomes even more important as a 
voting practice to be accomodated. With open ballot, a simple method 
would be to elect representatives with vote-for-one, where the voters 
who have elected a representative then get reduced voting power on 
the next ballot, which is only electing a reduced set. But that can't 
be done with secret ballot, per se.

However, Dodgson realized, and published in 1883 or so, a very simple 
fact: most ordinary voters, working people, busy people with 
families, etc., would often not know much more than a single favorite 
candidate. With STV, which he was working on, these voters are 
effectively disenfranchised, to a degree, unless they can identify 
candidates by party or use voting guides or the like, which then 
gives special power to political parties and leads away from electing 
independent representatives who might be closer to the people. So he 
invented Asset Voting, with an idea that is so simple that when I 
first heard about Single Transferable Vote, I thought it would be 
this: an exhausted ballot (or excess votes) would become "the 
property" of the candidate receiving them. (I presume that if the 
ballot wasn't a bullet vote, that it would go to the candidate in 
first position, since that candidate would clearly best represent the voter.)

To my knowledge, only one Asset election has ever been held, the 
election of the steering committee for the Election Science 
Foundation. It was, to me, quite interesting, and confirmed, more 
than I expected, that Asset is a powerful techique for obtaining full 
representation. There were 17 voters electing a three-member 
committee, and the election settled in about a week. The rules 
weren't well nailed down, but the power of Asset was such that this 
didn't matter. In the end, there was unanimity on the result, i.e., 
all agreed it was fair (except for one person whose objections were a 
little unclear, at least to me, and it has to be said that he did 
vote for someone who did produce the result.)

We should produce a standard set of rules for Asset election for 
on-line use, as through a mailing list with some provision for 
voting. The election was secret ballot; this is possible with Asset 
and is perhaps more difficult with delegable proxy. DP, of course, 
can be used to create an Asset Assembly with any desired number of 
representatives, the principles are similar. Asset is generally 
designed to create a peer assembly, where every member has the same 
voting power. I don't recommend DP for actual election, but for 
negotiation of election, if you can see the difference.... Asset, 
though, could be used immediately and raises no particular security 
issues beyond what are already issues with secret ballot.