[EM] Declaration's policy on single-mark ballots (was Re: Do any of you have any thoughts about California's top-two primary?)

[Steve Eppley]

It's a bad idea for the Declaration to 
denounce all single-mark ballot methods, 
because one of them--Vote for a Published 
Ranking (VPR)--has desirable properties that 
distinguish it from the others. (One can also 
make an argument that VPR is better than many 
voting methods that require more complicated 
ballots.)

      VPR:
      Two weeks before election day, each 
candidate publishes a top-to-bottom ordering
      of all the candidates. (Any candidate 
who fails to meet the deadline will be treated
      as if s/he'd ranked him/herself on top 
and all others tied for bottom.)

      On election day, each voter simply 
selects one candidate.

      Then each vote is treated as if it were 
the ordering published by its selected
      candidate.  These orderings are tallied 
by a good preference order algorithm
      to determine the winner.

Some interesting variations:
1. Give each candidate the opportunity to 
withdraw after the vote totals are published; 
withdrawn candidates will be dropped to the 
bottom of each ordering before the orderings 
are tallied.  With this option, tallying 
algorithms such as plurality rule & instant 
runoff would become nearly as good as 
condorcet algorithms because withdrawal would 
mitigate their vote-splitting problem. (Borda 
would still be terrible due to its clones 
problem.)  Also, withdrawal would be useful 
in presidential elections--with VPR and other 
voting methods--to help candidates avoid 
fragmenting the Electoral College.
2. Technology permitting, allow each voter to 
select an ordering published by a candidate 
or by a non-government organization (NGO).  
Some example NGOs: the New York Times, the 
Sierra Club, the National Rifle Association...
3. Technology permitting, let each voter 
modify the ordering published by her selected 
candidate, before submitting it as her vote.

Obviously, being a "single-mark" method, VPR 
maximizes simplicity.  Yet it can be expected 
to handle the vote-splitting problem well.  
It ought to typically allow each voter to 
vote for her sincere favorite, assuming her 
favorite publishes an ordering the voter 
considers reasonable. (Or strategically 
reasonable.  If an election has a strategy 
problem, the voter's favorite can handle it 
by publishing a strategic ordering, or by 
withdrawing if necessary, if withdrawal is an 
option.)

Also, VPR would make it easier for good 
candidates to win without spending a lot of 
money, since they can win by persuading other 
candidates to rank them over worse 
candidates.  For example, Centrist might 
persuade Left to rank Centrist over Right, 
and Right to rank Centrist over Left.  
Furthermore, an honest centrist might 
persuade Left & Right to rank her over 
corrupt centrists, and when she can't due to 
Left & Right also being corrupt, the corrupt 
orderings they publish would presumably 
attract negative attention during the two 
weeks preceding the election, reducing their 
votes.

Regards,
Steve Eppley
---------------
On 6/8/2012 2:20 PM, Richard Fobes wrote:
> Although this is a bit of a simplification, 
> the "top-two" runoff form of voting in the 
> U.S. consists of using single-mark ballots 
> combined with a variation of instant-runoff 
> voting.
-snip-
> The way this fits into the "Declaration of 
> Election-Method Reform Advocates" is that 
> the Declaration denounces single-mark 
> ballots, regardless of how they are counted.
-snip-
> I think the easiest way to explain the 
> concept is in the context of vote splitting, 
Richard Fobes
> > On 6/7/2012 8:31 AM, Adrian Tawfik wrote:
-snip-