[EM] Methods

[matt welland]

On Sun, 2011-10-16 at 20:51 +0000, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote:
> [snip]


> It's difficult to choose between Approval and a good rank method, for
> a public proposal.
>  
> Rank methods elicit more interest from people, because they can offer
> more. 
>  
> But rank methods have the disadvantage that there are so many ways to
> count rankings, that people
> are overwhelmed, and hear conflicting advice. How to count the
> rankings, they wonder.
>  
> Also, Approval is like a solid, reliable and simple hand-tool. It
> isn't as labor-saving as a good rank method.
> The rank-methods are labor-saving machines. But machines can have
> their problems &/or idiosyncracies.

Your analogy of hand tool is a good one but I disagree that rank methods
can be likened to "labor saving". Instead consider cutting wood for the
fire. I can take my axe and split a lot more logs in an hour than could
be cut with a saw. But the nice clean cuts of the saw are irrelevant as
I'm going to burn the wood. The ranking methods are like the saw, labor
intensive and expensive to use whereas the approval method is like the
axe, rough and crude but fast and efficient and does exactly what needs
to be done and no more. 

It seems many folks hope that by using ranking more nuanced desires can
be articulated by the voters. However I think in many elections nuance
is wasted effort and allowing it is actually harmful to the process,
especially since ranking and range can be used strategically (I guess
you guys call it burial?).

Look for example at the range of education levels in voters. Rankers are
proposing to measure subtle differences in opinion in a population where
80% couldn't draw a supply-demand curve and 99.999% haven't even heard
of say, Henry George (who, IMHO and completely off topic, offers the
only sane explanation for our economic system failures).

> Some or many will sometimes act up or do things that will embarrass
> you. Some more than others,
> of course.
>  
> It has been shown, here, and in journal articles, that Approval will
> soon home in on the CW. After a few
> elecions. But "a few elections" can be a decade or more. We'd like
> better results before that, and so

Does this prediction of "a few" elections account for polls typically
done over and over prior to the election also being done with approval?
My hunch is that Approval would have an immediate disruptive (in a good
way) impact if the accompanying polls were also approval. As I've said
in a previous post, one of the desperately needed outcomes is merely to
ensure that alternative voices are not buried. Approval is more than
enough to keep the lead parties or politicians accountable and on their
toes. Todays climate where both leading parties in the US can ignore the
bulk of the wishes of their constituents would be utterly destroyed by
implementing approval.

> I'm for a rank method as much as anyone is. If we can overcome the
> problem of voters confronted with
> so many different rank counts.
>  
> And the problem of telling the voter why our rank proposal is
> desirable.

The reason it is so hard to tell the voters why the rank proposals are
desirable is because intuitively I think many people can sense trouble
with the rank methods. This is because they *are* trouble. Expensive to
implement, difficult to understand, difficult to "figure out" the right
strategy. Awkward and painful to do the actual voting (*). The sale is
for a cross cut saw when the customer clearly needs a heavy splitting ax
and the customer is smart. Yeah, the saw is far better than the ax, but,
uh, I need the ax!

(*) find online approval and ranking systems with more than ten items
and go vote fifty times in each. My experience is that ranking sucks.
Voting fifty times in succession in an approval poll however is annoying
but tolerable. 

> Mike Ossipoff
>  
> 
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