[EM] A Comparison of the Two Known Monotone, Clone Free Methods for Electing Uncovered Alternatives

[C.Benham]

Forest Simmons wrote (31 Dec 2010):

> Chris,
>
> You are right that since Chain Climbing does not satisfy IPDA, neither 
> does the method that takes the
> parwise victor of it and the Covering Chain winner.  I was more 
> thinking out loud than pushing that idea.
>
> Do you think that Approval Sorted Pairwise and the Covering Chain 
> process are simple enough for use in
> a public proposal?
>
> Happy New Year!
>
> Forest


Forest,
Regarding your first paragraph above, the method you suggested before 
was to elect whichever of  the Chain
Climbing and Covering Chain winners was higher on the list L (made by 
some method that meets mono-raise),
not whichever of the two pairwise beats the other; but I assume the same 
applies.

In answer to your question, I'm afraid probably not. For a sceptical 
electorate accustomed to essentially *no*
voting algorithm, I doubt that Approval-Sorted Margins by itself is 
simple enough.

And yet it is nice to be able to do without the concept of the "Smith 
set", necessary for "Smith//Approval".

Regarding Chain Covering, does the extra complexity of using  ASM 
instead of  Approval to make the list L
really gain much?

Happy New Year to you too. :)

Chris  Benham


> The second method, the "covering chain" method,  starts at the top of 
> the list
> and works downward.  A variable X is initialized as the alternative 
> highest on
> the list.  While some alternative covers X, the highest such 
> alternative on the
> list becomes the new value of X. The final value of X is the covering 
> chain winner.