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

[Dave Ketchum]

On Apr 19, 2010, at 11:48 AM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
> 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.

My words above related to simple elections.  Later I talked of  
others.  Abd responds to all kinds here.
>
>
> 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.)

Plurality has been the major method in the US.

It gets in trouble with multiple candidates and none getting a  
majority - so do TTR runoffs.  TTR gets in trouble if the best  
candidate did not get enough votes to go to TTR (two others got more,  
even though not truly better).

It gets in trouble with clones and almost-clones.  This problem gets  
reduced a bit, though not cured, by parties doing primary elections.

Anyway, the aim was to do the major campaigning before the "main"  
election.

Abd would do more runoffs, leaning toward doing the major campaigning  
then.  I choke because I still see need for campaigning before the  
main election to get the "right" leaders to the runoff.

I would go to Condorcet:
      Forget primaries - Condorcet can tolerate clones and voters  
should be able to learn related voting.
      I would do less runoffs - voters can more completely express  
their desires.

Bucklin?  I see its way of handling ranking as not worth voters having  
to learn and use those rules.  Note that Condorcet only asks for  
ordering of ranks per voter desires.

Below Abd talks of Asset - interesting.
>
> 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.