[EM] Lomax reply 3,/13/12

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

Abd:

I'm starting this reply today, though I probably won't have enough computer-time
today to complete this reply.

First, two definitions that you asked about:

AOC:

AOC is Optional Conditional Approval. You can make any of your approvals conditional
by mutuality. Then, that approval is counted only if it is reciprocated. The best
way to describe how it actually works is by the pseudocode for the proposed process
for optional conditionality by mutuality. That pseudocode can be found in my first
posting that introduced (and mentioned in the subject-line) "MTA-Optional-Conditional (MTAOC)"
That posting contains the pseudocode for determining whether a conditional MTA middle-rating will
be counted. AOC uses that same algorithm to determine whether to count a conditional approval.
Some days later I posted a message with a subject line indicating a fix for a typo, an
inadvertently-omitted line that needed to be added to the pseudocode. Then later I posted another message in which I
suggested that all of your top-rated (in MTA) candidates should be regarded as "coalition-suitable"
(instead of asking the voter to mark some top-rated candidates as "coaliton-suitable") for you. 
In AOC, unconditional approval is, for that purpose, treated as top-rating.

I admit that that is a mess--when my optional-conditionality-by-mutuality algorithm definition
is in three widely-separated postings. At least I should re-post the corrected pseudocode in
one posting. Should have already done that before now. Will within a few days.

u/a election:

u/a stands for unacceptable/acceptable. A u/a election is one in which there is one or more completely unacceptable
candidates who could win.

In such an election, avoiding the election of an unacceptable is all-important. In a u/a election by ABucklin,
it's definitely your best strategy to top-rank all the acceptables, and not rank any unacceptables. I consider our
public political elections to be u/a. The Republocrats are the among the unacceptables, though there are probably
others too. That's just my opinion as a voter, judging by standards such as dishonesty, corruption, bought-ness, etc. 

The Republocrats are a set, effectively a party, consisting of two nearly identical subsets called 
Democrats and Republicans. Gore Vidal said that we don't have a two-party system--We have one party with two right wings.

End of definitions of AOC and u/a election.

At 04:04 PM 3/5/2012, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote:

You said that achievability, getting from here to there, is more important than optimality, for 
a voting system proposal. Yes, and that's why strongly suggest that Approval should be the first
proposal. In later proposals, vote-management options could be added. They include:

AOC, MTAOC, MCAOC, AOCBucklin (Bucklin with the MTAOC kind of optional conditionality), 
the delegation option of SODA, and fractional voting (RV). All of these options could be offered
for the same Approval election. Of course they needn't all be offered in the same enhancement
proposal. I'd start with AOC. But, first, Approval should be proposed.

Approval, though entirely adequate as a destination method, is also the best route to ABucklin or
SODA or maybe RV.

Or, alternatively, RV could be the first proposal:

Of course it goes without saying that Approval voting is automatically a way of voting in RV (you 
top-rate your approved candidates and bottom-rate everyone else). Then, all of the abovementioned
Approval vote-management options could be proposed too.

Approval, then, is naturally, easily, expandable to AOC, AOCBucklin, ABucklin, RV, SODA, etc.,
as vote-management options in the Approval election.

You spoke of the "one-person-one-vote" (opov) objection to Approval. 

Yes, that objection amounts to a complete misunderstand of what opov was originally intended to mean.

Opov meant that each person should have the same voting power. One person shouldn't be able to outvote
two or three people. Approval doesn't violate opov.

If someone wants more elaboration about that, point out to them that, in an Approval election, my ballot
can cancel your ballot, no matter how many candidates you vote for--I could do that by voting for all
the candidates you don't vote for, and not for any that you do vote for.

For example, suppose that you vote for all of the candidates except for one. I can cancel your ballot
by voting only for the one candidate that you didn't vote for.

So, obviously, you don't have more voting power by voting for more candidates. In a 10-candidate election,
in the above example, you've voted for 9 times as many candidates I've voted for, but I've canceled you
out. Voting for more candidates didn't give you more voting power. Any ballot can be cancelled out by
an oppositely-voted ballot.

Approval is a point system. Like the 0-10 point system, or the 0-100 point system, Approval is a point
system. Approval is the 0-1 point system.

Approval asks you to rate each candidate as acceptable or unacceptable. Your vote on a candidate's
acceptability is no stronger than anyone else's.

Approval elects the candidate who is acceptable to the most voters.

I've probably mentioned this in my other reply, but all of the Approval strategies that we've discussed at EM
amount to voting for all the candidates who are better than your expectation for the election. In other words,
vote for a candidate only if you'd rather appoint hir to office instead of holding the election.

So, Approval maximizes the number of voters for whom the winner is better than their expectation was. The candidate
who was better than what they expected. The candidate who maximizes the number of pleasantly-surprised voters.



>(First, when I speak of ABucklin as an Approval option, that's only 
>for brevity and simplicity,
>because, starting from Approval, I'd offer AOC as an option or an 
>alternative method, before ABucklin.
>AOCBucklin, for me, would be next, after AOC. Still, as Abd 
>suggested, ABucklin is the natural
>1-balloting implementation of a reasonable and obvious collective 
>deliberating process, and, thereby,
>might be the first alternative voting system that people would 
>accept--Then AOCBucklin could be reserved
>for a later enhancement.)
 
Unfortunately, I don't know what "AOC" is, and I searched the subject 
headers here. It was used in many posts, none of which explained what 
the method was, some contained long sentences with unexplained 
alphabet soup..... Sigh.
 
You continued:

Bucklin is a simululation of a *common* collective 
deliberating process, not just a reasonable one. Bucklin/runoff is a 
more sophisticated simulation that splits up the compromising process 
into two ballots. 

[endquote]

...But the runoff would complicate the proposal. You could propose it later, though.
But when you complicate or elaborate a method, FBC-failure tends to sneak in.

In your posting you suggest a runoff between some two members of {CW, Bucklin-winner, RV-winner}.

That adds complication, and so, as you probably know, it shouldn't be proposed other than as a
later enhancement. And deciding which two members of that 3-element set should go into the runoff adds another complication.

Adding that runoff would mean making a new method, instead of just having Approval with vote-management options. 
I'm not saying that that rules it out, but an enhancement other than an option would, of course, require more
justification and more convincing.

Besides, anything using the CW almost surely violates FBC.

To be continued...

Mike Ossipoff




 		 	   		  
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