[EM] Has this idea been considered?

[Toby Pereira]

The thing about SODA is that it's harder to "get" than Approval Voting. I 
haven't exactly read through all the posts on it here thoroughly but I've looked 
at the page - 
http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Simple_Optionally-Delegated_Approval - and I do 
find myself thinking "What?" All of its advantages over other systems may be 
within the posts on this board, but they are not that clear to me from reading 
the article. The method is explained and also the criteria it satisfies but I'm 
not happy that I've been convinced why it works.

Why are the votes only delegable if you bullet vote (or is that obvious)? Also 
it seems like a lot of work for just the people who bullet vote (and also allow 
delegation). Do we know in practice what proportion of people do bullet vote in 
Approval Voting? Might SODA reduce this number anyway?

From the page: "If any candidate has an absolute majority at this point, or 
cannot possibly be beaten by any other candidate using the delegable votes and 
candidate rankings available, then they win immediately." Does absolute majority 
just mean over 50%? But with Approval 50% isn't a particular threshold. You can 
get over 50% and still be beaten. Maybe I'm just unclear on "absolute majority", 
but it's been put as distinct from "cannot possibly be beaten by any other 
candidate using the delegable votes and candidate rankings available".

And it still seems strange to me that candidates pre-declare their delegation 
order but then still get to negotiate. Yes, there's an explanation, but I'm not 
really sure I get it. "The system as it stands allows them to see, after the 
votes are counted, which of them deserves to win. That one will not delegate 
their votes, and the other one (of necessity) will." Couldn't there be a way in 
the system to decide who deserves to win (e.g. based on who would get more 
votes after the delegation or who had more to start with)? 


Also, just out of interest, is there a multi-winner version?




________________________________
From: Andy Jennings <elections at jenningsstory.com>
Cc: election-methods at lists.electorama.com
Sent: Fri, 8 July, 2011 20:57:52
Subject: Re: [EM] Has this idea been considered?

On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 3:56 AM, Jameson Quinn <jameson.quinn at gmail.com> wrote:


>
>So, I guess the question is: is there anyone who would support Approval but not 
>SODA? Respond in text. Also, I made a poll on betterpolls - go 
>vote. http://betterpolls.com/v/1425
>

Wow, that results page is hard to read when the poll is about voting systems and 
the results are analyzed with lots of different voting methods.  Very "meta".

In any case, I went and voted.

I was pretty hard on SODA.  Even though I like where it's going, I, like 
Kristofer, don't think it's been analyzed enough to become our endorsed system 
at this point.

Let's keep working on it...

Andy
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