[EM] Kevin V.

[Kevin Venzke]

Hi David,

>>KV:The similarity is that with SODA, you (and like-minded candidates) get a benefit even if you don't 
>>win. Under normal methods you have the inherent pressure against running clones (that I think we both 
>>agree exists) with little possible benefit in nominating them.
>
>dlw: What is the benefit?  You might get lucky?  There'd be pressure in real life against clones running 
>regardless and so the strength of the effect is still an empirical question.  
 
The benefits are
1. to the candidate: still gets to influence the result even if he loses
2. to the voter: greater chance of having somebody palatable to vote for without wasting the vote
3. to the candidate's party: the candidate can attract voters that might not have bothered voting if there
had only been one nominee.
 
The main factor working against nominating clones in most methods is that it risks dividing up the voters
such that they refuse to vote for all the like-minded candidates. If voters actually delegate power to a candidate
(which is a little uncertain) the risk of this is reduced.
 
>>Well, I don't understand how you see it aiding anything. If you place third or worse on first preferences 
>>you will almost certainly lose. It doesn't really matter if every voter approved you.
>
>dlw: Well that is the point, you need to become enuf voters 1st preference, or get support for 2nd or 3rd 
>from voters whose favorites are not popular. I have a hard time seeing how you see it as not aiding anything.  

IRV already does that. Doesn't it? I'm asking how the Approval part helps. But I guess you answer that just
below:
 
>>By "difficult to tabulate" I was talking about IRV itself. But no matter:
>
>dlw: Maybe that's why I'm pushing IRV+???
 
Ok, maybe I should take that literally, that you want to use an approval filter because it makes IRV easier
to tabulate. I don't know what else the lack of example scenarios could mean.

>>KV:Ok, so you are married to IRV or variants because of its "first mover" status. Then my question switches 
>>to how the approval rule helps it. Do you have a scenario on-hand that shows your method doing something 
>>preferable to what IRV normally would do? I can't think of what the expected difference would be, except 
>>when somehow the second-place (on first preferences) candidate isn't among the top three approved. Are 
>>you thinking of a Chirac/Jospin/Le Pen scenario (2002 French presidential election)? Though that would 
>>not even have happened under IRV.
>
>dlw: Speeding up the election and simplifying the use of IRV are enuf to justify the use of IRV+ over IRV, 
>especially for bigger elections.  It doesn't matter how often it'd get a different outcome.  There'd be no recursion 
>in the explanation of how it'd work and that'd be one less arg that opponents of electoral reform could use 
>against it.  
>Plus, almost all of the args used by advocates of Approval Voting against IRV would get watered down..., 
>cuz the simple fact of the matter is that IRV works best with only 3 candidates.  

I don't buy that second paragraph at all. Contrived IRV bad examples usually don't need more than three.
Do you know one that requires four?
 
>>>It's not raw for a first stage of single-winner election.  Plurality at-large for multiple seats is not unlike 
>>>single-winner elections, but that's the point, it's a single-winner election rule.   thanks for the good comments.
>>
>>By "raw" I mean "nothing is done to ensure one viewpoint doesn't take all the spots." Usually finalist selection 
>>isn't "single-winner" (read: single viewpoint) but are somewhat representative of all the voters, such as the 
>>last two candidates standing in IRV. 
>
>dlw: Well, if there's only winner in the end, it doesn't matter if all viewpoints are expressed in the final round.  
>There's usually no door-bell prize.  
 
Yes but theoretically you make the final round moot. I can't believe we're discussing this. You're using
approval to pick finalists for IRV and apparently don't believe this would even be too different from IRV. Maybe
you're right. But you should see that if your finalists all came from the same viewpoint then your method would
actually be equivalent to Approval, not IRV. All the steps to conduct IRV would be a waste.
 
Kevin