[EM] A DSV method inspired by SODA

[Jameson Quinn]

2011/8/4 <fsimmons at pcc.edu>

> Of course DSC and DAC are the same when rankings are complete.  I was only
> going to use it to determine the first player, and with amalgamated factions
> (almost surely) the rankings would be complete.
>

Yes, understood. I on the other hand was speaking of using this within SODA
itself, not within your SODA-inspired method. In SODA, tied candidate
preferences are legal.

I'd call the resulting method SODA-DAC. Plain SODA still uses the order
based on current approval total, for simplicity. The results are equivalent
for up to 3 candidates, and generally speaking as long as the CW makes a
strong initial showing (goes first, or goes second of 4, or ....)


>
> Of course there are many variations of this DSV idea [e.g. we could use
> chiastic approval to pick the first player], but the main contribution of
> SODA is the idea of sequential determination of the approval cutoffs.  That
> eliminates the need for mixed (i.e. probabilistic) strategies.  In other
> words, it makes the DSV method deterministic instead of stochastic.
>

Again, understood.


>   I think a deterministic DSV method is easier to sell than a stochastic
> one, even though personally I would be happy with "strategy A" applied to
> the ballots one by one in some random order.  In other words, the approval
> cutoff on the current ballot is next to the current approval winner on the
> side of the approval runnerup.  If there is no CW, then the winner depends
> on the random order of the ballot processing.  The public might have a hard
> time with that fact.
>

I agree. In particular, even I might have a hard time, if there weren't at
least a deterministic pseudorandom number generator with a pre-declared
seed. Even then, this process would be much more difficult to audit /
recount than a deterministic one. So I agree that the player-order idea for
making things deterministic is helpful.

JQ
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/attachments/20110804/07ac9963/attachment-0004.htm>