[EM] Methods

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

matt welland wrote:

> Assuming that a) decent information about the candidates has been
> available via news, web and debates and b) reasonable quality approval
> polls have been conducted prior to the election then:
> 
> In the case where there are too few good options then clearly the
> candidates do not represent a good cross section of the values and
> criteria considered important to the people or the people are are too
> diverse to be easily represented. This is not a problem that can be
> solved by an election system. All a ranked system would do is hide the
> issue and choose some candidate that clearly a large portion of the
> population would not be happy with.

In the case of too few good options, no election system of any sort can 
directly fix the problem. The election method or system helps in an 
indirect way: by leveling the playing field, it permits entry by 
candidates or parties who notice that there's room for something better.

I think that, as levelers, many ranked vote methods will work. Some 
don't, if you consider the Australian results under IRV indicative, but 
that's not inherent to all ranked ballot methods, in my opinion.

> In the case where there are many good options then approval is exposing
> that fact. It is true that this scenario makes strategic voting more
> important but since we are assuming that decent information and prior
> polling is available I think voters can apply a pretty simple strategy
> to decide if it is safe to not vote for the front runner they don't
> really like. Assuming a party or conservative/liberal philosophical
> split then if the candidate they do like is ahead of the leading
> candidate in the opposing camp then they can safely not vote for the
> front runner in their camp they don't like. Hard to explain but trivial
> once understood. 
> 
> Again, I think it is very, very important to note that the ranked
> systems actually lose or hide information relative to approval in both
> these cases.

In what manner does a ranked method hide information? Neither ranked 
ballot methods nor strategic Approval can distinguish between 
"everybody's equally good" and "everybody's equally bad".

> Note that in the first case the results and impact of a ranked system
> are actually worse than the results of approval. The political pressure
> to converge and appeal to a broad spectrum is greater under approval
> than the ranked systems. The evaluation of a voting system only makes
> sense in the context of all the other things going on in a society. The
> pressure on politicians to actually meet the needs of the people is a
> massively important factor and ranked systems appear to wash out some of
> that force which is a very bad thing IMHO.

Again, why is that the case? In Approval, you're either in or you're 
out; but in ranked methods, the method can refine upon those two groups 
and find the better of the good (be that by broad or deep support 
relative to the others). If anything, this finer gradient should 
increase the impact, not decrease it, because the search will more often 
be pointed in the right direction.