[EM] Remember Toby

[fsimmons at pcc.edu]

----- Original Message -----
From: Jameson Quinn
Date: Wednesday, June 1, 2011 11:27 am
Subject: Re: [EM] Remember Toby
To: Dave Ketchum
Cc: Kristofer Munsterhjelm , election-methods at lists.electorama.com, fsimmons at pcc.edu

> 2011/6/1 Dave Ketchum
>
> > On Jun 1, 2011, at 3:57 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
> >
> >> fsimmons at pcc.edu wrote:
> >>
> >>> It seems to me that thevoters are more worried about the
> ballot type
> >>> and ease of voting it than they are of the exact counting rules.
> >>> There are several Condorcet methods that are clone proof and
> >>> monotonic without being too complicated.
> >>>
> >>
> > Let's start by narrowing the field:
> >
> > Let's not. Choosing a voting system is a trade-off, and using
> a single
> argument to eliminate a system or class of systems from
> consideration is not
> helpful.
>
> I'm sure I could come up with some honest, logical arguments
> against your
> choice of systems, whatever that may be. The point of choosing a
> commonproposal to put forward, while still supporting a range of
> systems, is that
> just arguing leads nowhere.
>
> A common proposal is not going to satisfy everyone. But it
> absolutely must
> be extremely simple to understand. I've seen four proposals in
> this thread
> that pass that test for me:
> - Approval
> - DYN
> - Condorcet/Approval
> - Minimax Condorcet
>
> I'd suggest a fifth:
> - MYND - that is, just DYN, with a two-way runoff if there's a
> (M)ajorityfailure, or if the second-place majority-approved
> candidate demands it. This
> is essentially a "work it out, guys" threat to keep any
> negotiation between
> near-clones grounded in the voters' will, as all of the above
> are in some
> way vulnerable to a game of chicken between supporters of near-clones.
>
> None of these are my favorite systems in theory, but any of them
> would be a
> huge practical step up from plurality.
>
> I would still enthusiastically support more-complex systems, but
> I don't
> think that they're the most efficient use of our advocacy energy.
>
> JQ
>

Approval deserves the place you have given it for effectiveness and simplicity,
but in trying to sell it over the years I have encountered an unexpected level
of resistance.  The reasons are mainly these two: (1) Voters feel inadequate for
making the decisions necessary for near optimum strategy. (2) they want a method
that satisfies the strong FBC, i.e. they want to be able to vote their Favorite
strictly ahead of any other candidate without lowering the probability that
their vote will be pivotal for the better.

It turns out that Asset voting better meets their expectations on both of those
counts:  they think that voting for favorite is pretty much optimum strategy in
that context, even though it is perfectly clear that when your favorite cannot
possibly win, and you disagree strongly about her preferred of the two
frontrunners, you should use plurality strategy.

DYN fixes all of these problems.  You have as much control as you want.  You can
give Favorite all discretion or you can take it all for yourself, i.e. you can
make it into anything between pure delegation (Asset style Approval) and pure
Approval.

If we go for one of the Condorcet methods I think that there should be
provisions on the ballot for the voters that want to delegate some or all of
their ranking to one of the candidates.  This would be easier if Range style
ballots were used, and the rankings necessary  inferred from the ratings.  Then
in Condorect/Approval any positive rating would be considered as Approval.

In particular if the range were from zero to fifteen, a typical line of the
ballot might look like

Joe Candidate   (fav)  (?)  (8)  (4)  (2)  (1)

If the voter wants to indicate that this candidate is her favorite, she darkens
the (fav) bubble.

If the voter wants to delegate the rating to her favorite, she darkens in the
(?) bubble.

If no bubble is darkened, her rating of the candidate is zero.

Otherwise the sum of the darkened digits is her rating for the candidate.