[EM] Rebuttal to article by Mike Ossipoff

[Richard Fobes]

On 5/1/2012 7:12 PM, Adrian Tawfik wrote:
> ... Do you have any interest in writing the rebuttal
> article to Mr. Ossipoff? His article will be published soon.

At Adrian's invitation, here is a suggested "rebuttal" to give balance 
to Mike's article:

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Mike Ossipoff is correct in claiming that Approval voting is a simple 
voting method, and that it produces results that are much fairer than 
plurality voting (which we now use).  However, most election-method 
experts do not share Ossipoff's very high regard for the Favorite 
Betrayal Criterion.  He does mention that Approval voting fails the more 
highly regarded criterion called the Condorcet criteria, which basically 
says that the winner of a Condorcet-compliant voting method would win a 
runoff election against any other candidate (assuming that voters do not 
change their preferences).  However his preference for simplicity over 
fairness is not shared by a majority of election-method experts.

The signers of the "Declaration of Election-Method Reform Advocates" 
support Approval voting for use in governmental elections.  Some of us 
who strongly prefer other methods would be happy if Approval voting were 
used in primary elections or selected smaller general elections.  In 
contrast, other election-method experts (who have not signed the 
Declaration) do not support the use of Approval voting in any 
governmental election because it could produce disappointing results 
that might cause voters to reject all election-method reforms and go 
back to plurality voting.

Personally I encourage everyone to try Approval voting when you find 
yourself in a group of people who are choosing where to eat.  In this 
case each person raises their hand or says "yes" for each food choice 
they approve, and whichever choice gets the most votes wins.  This 
method is much fairer than the traditional ("plurality") approach of 
only allowing each person to "approve" a single choice.

However, using Approval voting in hotly-contested general elections 
would be highly controversial.

For a full comparison of popular voting methods based on many different 
criteria, you can view the comparison table in Wikipedia's "Voting 
system" article [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_system].

Richard Fobes

[Adrian: A link to the table itself would not be a stable link]

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I am offering this as a possible rebuttal, but if someone else has a 
stronger desire to write a rebuttal, I won't mind if this one is not used.

What is important to me is fairness, and that the rebuttal does not 
dismiss the article, nor dismiss Approval voting.

I appreciate that Mike is helping to educate citizens about better 
voting methods, yet it is important that bias either be avoided or 
pointed out.

Richard Fobes