[EM] Bucklin strategy (was: Fwd: [ESF #1118] Another bullet vote argument)

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 10:48 AM 5/14/2010, Jameson Quinn wrote:
>Basically, I'd summarize my feelings about Bucklin in light of this 
>strategy analysis as:
>
>Bucklin is no more than sugar-coated approval. And that makes it the 
>best system available in a wide range of circumstances.

Well, it's Approval with the most common objection addressed, an 
inability to express the favorite. Mr. Quinn is clearly supporting 
Bucklin, but I'll point out that it is not "no more" than 
sugar-coated. That tasty ability to express the favorite causes 
Bucklin to satisfy the Majority Criterion. It allows the addition of 
more approvals without sacrificing the right of a majority to make a decision.

This almost certainly encourages additional approvals, and historical 
Bucklin election usage of additional approvals was often high. I'm 
sure it depends on the election circumstances. We've been told for 
years that Bucklin was dropped because voters didn't use additional 
approvals because of fear of Later-No-Harm violation, and therefore 
low usage, but, in fact, so far, that hasn't been born out by what 
actually happened.

In San Francisco, for example, Bucklin was used for two or three 
elections, around 1919. It was not dropped directly; rather, a 
technicality allowed the Board of Elections to revert to the state 
default (vote for one!) by choosing to buy a few (just a few! not for 
everyone) new-fangled voting machines....

By that time, I'm suspecting, it was being realized that Bucklin 
worked, it started to get around that the first Bucklin election, in 
Grand Junction Colorade, elected a SOCIALIST!!!!

Third in first preferences! That does not happen with IRV, period.

Bucklin was dropped because it worked, and there are lots of people 
who didn't -- and don't -- want voting systems to work.

I'm not making this up. The Socialist argument was actually advanced 
in San Francisco, when the "Grand Junction" method was discussed 
before the Commonwealth Club there. Allegedly, those selfish partisan 
SOCIALISTS! were bound and determined never to vote for anyone but a 
SOCIALIST, so they didn't add votes for anyone else, but the 
good-hearted Republicans and Democrats, of course, added additional 
preferences, which explains why the SOCIALIST! won.

The data doesn't support that.

The Grand Junction election (this was 1909) was non-partisan, and we 
can assume that people voted for the winner because they knew and 
liked him. His party was probably irrelevant. Grand Junction had 
about 8000 voters, as I recall. Small town.