[EM] Explicit approval cutoffs in ranked ballots

[Juho Laatu]

On 18.10.2011, at 16.26, Andrew Myers wrote:

> To collect this information, all you have to do is introduce a choice "approved" and let voters rank relative to that choice.

How about this practical ballot format:

          (BEST)        APPROVED                    NOT APPROVED       (WORST)
Andrew A:   O   O   O   O   x   O   O   O  |  O   O   O   O   O   O   O   O
Bertha B:   x   O   O   O   O   O   O   O  |  O   O   O   O   O   O   O   O
Carlos C:   O   O   O   O   O   O   O   O  |  O   x   O   O   O   O   O   O

One could use also terms PROMOTED and NOT PROMOTED if one wants to give the ballot more Approval strategy flavour (instead of sincere approval flavour).

The APPROVED part could be painted green and the NOT APPROVED part red.

Otherwise this is just a ballot that is easy and quick to fill (also when there are 20 candidates), and that contains many enough columns so that the voter can in most cases indicate as many ranks as he wants.

Voters should also understand that unmarked candidates are considered WORST.

If there are parties, all candidates of each party should be listed next to each others and maybe grouped together somehow to make voting (and especially ranking) easier.

The point of this mail is to claim that this kind of ballots are still quite understandable and easy enough to be filled by voters that have no particular interest in complex election methods. I just proposed one method that requires explicit approvals, so I wanted to demonstrate that explicit approvals are feasible in practical elections.

Juho




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