[EM] Satisfaction Approval Voting - A Better Proportional Representation Electoral Method

[Kathy Dopp]

>
>   1. Re: Satisfaction Approval Voting - A Better Proportional
>      Representation Electoral Method (Abd ul-Rahman Lomax)

> Date: Fri, 21 May 2010 13:23:38 -0400
> From: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <abd at lomaxdesign.com>
> To: Jameson Quinn <jameson.quinn at gmail.com>,Raph Frank
>        <raphfrk at gmail.com>
> Cc: election-methods <election-methods at lists.electorama.com>
> Subject: Re: [EM] Satisfaction Approval Voting - A Better Proportional
>        Representation Electoral Method
> Message-ID: <20100521172937.B40E88DB00AB at zapata.dreamhost.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
>
> At 02:05 PM 5/20/2010, Jameson Quinn wrote:
>>I was talking about SPA, not SAV. SPA (summable proportional
>>approval) is a summable method which, with very high probability,
>>corresponds to Sequential Proportional Approval, first proposed by
>>Thiele (c.1890). This in turn corresponds, with high probability, to
>>the following simple procedure, which I think is easy enough for
>>anybody to understand:
>>
>>1. Collect approval ballots
>>2. Count the ballots and elect the approval winner
>>3. Select a droop quota of ballots which approve the approval winner
>>and discard them. First discard ballots which only approve
>>already-elected candidates; then randomly select the rest. If there
>>are not enough ballots, discard all available.
>>4. If the council is not full, repeat from step 2.
>
> Yeah, and to avoid the random selection problem, which could wreak
> havoc with auditing, you'd keep all the ballots and just devalue them
> proportionally to give them the proper remaining vote strength. I.e.,
> if there are N ballots, with quota Q, the ballots would now be worth
> (N-Q)/N, but not less than zero.
>
> That's more complicated, to be sure, it requires maintaining sets of
> devalued ballots. This could be done centrally, in fact, by
> categorizing ballots into vote combinations, but that's also a lot of
> data to transmit. Ultimately, with computers for analysis, and public
> ballot data -- another reform I'm very interested in -- the analysis
> could be done easily.


I like this one because although it has some of the same flaws as
STV/IRV -- having to track all the possible ballot choices cast in
each precinct to make it precinct-summable -- it requires tracking far
fewer unique choices since candidate order does not matter, and the
method is fair and equitable because there are no
elimination/redistributions of the votes ranking lowest-scoring
candidates highest, so it seems like it eliminates the nonmonotonicity
and non-majoritarian features of STV/IRV.

>
> Asset has other values that would make it superior, with what is now
> being called SAV to determine the votes held by the candidates. SAV
> woudl determine winners but only those who win with a direct quota. I
> called it FAAV, Fractional Approval Asset Voting.

I think asset voting might be very difficult to implement in practice
for the candidates, although it is interesting.

Kathy.

>
> With Asset, the fractional approval does not create a problem with
> voting power, it's safe to vote with complete sincerity, and
> vote-for-one works fine. In fact, I only suggest fractional approval
> to avoid discarding ballots, and because some people object to the
> idea of transferring all their voting power to one person, though, in
> fact, that's what's going to happen in the Assembly!
>
> (Unless this becomes direct/asset democracy, which allows the
> "electors" to continue to exercise voting power when they so choose,
> seats are only elected for representation in deliberation and default
> voting power.)
>
>

-- 

Kathy Dopp
http://electionmathematics.org
Town of Colonie, NY 12304
"One of the best ways to keep any conversation civil is to support the
discussion with true facts."

Realities Mar Instant Runoff Voting
http://electionmathematics.org/ucvAnalysis/US/RCV-IRV/InstantRunoffVotingFlaws.pdf

Voters Have Reason to Worry
http://utahcountvotes.org/UT/UtahCountVotes-ThadHall-Response.pdf

View my research on my SSRN Author page:
http://ssrn.com/author=1451051