[EM] My summary of the recent discussion

[Jameson Quinn]

2012/6/2 Juho Laatu <juho4880 at yahoo.co.uk>

> On 2.6.2012, at 18.19, Jameson Quinn wrote:
>
>
>> 2) Approval method and its strategies were once more discussed. My
>> understanding is simply that Approval works quite fine as long as there are
>> only one or two winnable candidates, but when there are three or more, the
>> method pretty much fails
>>
>
> Fails compared to what? At its worst, approval is still better than
> plurality; and depending on your voting model, it could be much better (for
> instance, honest probabilistic approval is range, with great BR).
>
> Jameson
>
>
> I was just thinking that it "fails to work properly".
>
> Approval is more expressive than Plurality and it allows (small) third
> parties to run without becoming spoilers. But I wouldn't say that it is
> categorically better than Plurality since there are many needs and many
> uses for election methods. One difference is that Approval is a compromise
> oriented method while Plurality aims at electing from (and forming) large
> parties. If our target is to establish a two-party system, Plurality is our
> natural choice.
>

I strongly disagree. Even for a two-party system, plurality's flaws are
worse than its advantages. Even if two-party is your goal (and I'd argue
that's a bad goal, you can get the same actual beneficial ends without two
parties if you need to), IRV and/or official party primaries are the way to
get it.

Jameson

>
> Range and Approval (if seen as one Range variant) are good for certain
> kind of elections. Typically we use majority based single-winner methods in
> competitive political environments and utility based methods when we have
> neutral non-competitive "judges" as voters. Also here the needs determine
> which method is best.
>
> Juho
>
>
>
>
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