[EM] Methods

[matt welland]

On Mon, 2011-10-17 at 20:42 +0200, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
> matt welland wrote:
> > 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.

A ranked system cannot give the feedback that all the candidates are
disliked (e.g. all candidates get less than 50% approval). It also
cannot feedback that all the candidates are essentially equivalent (all
have very high approval).

Ranked systems essentially normalize the vote. I think this is a serious
issue. A ranked system can give a false impression that there is a
"favorite" but the truth might be that none of the candidates are
acceptable. 

Ironically by trying to capture nuances the ranked systems have lost an
interesting and valuable part of the voter feedback.

A voting system should never give the impression that candidates that
are universally loathed are ok. If our candidates were Adol Hitler,
Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Benito Mussolini, Mao Zedong and
Leopold II of Belgium then approval would rightly illustrate that none
are good candidates. However a ranked system would merely indicate that
one of them is the "condorcet" winner giving no indication that none are
acceptable.

I think any sane voting system *must* meet this requirement. The ability
for the electorate to unambiguously communicate that none of the
candidates are worthy of the post under contest. 

I don't know how to prove it but my hunch is that approval would be more
resistant to manipulation by the so-called "one percenter" elites than
ranked systems.

We *need* headlines that read "Gallup Poll Indicates that No Candidate
for President is Acceptable!" (in the case where it was true of course).
You can never get that headline with ranked systems.

Matt
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