[EM] Approval voting and incumbents

[Andy Jennings]

A lot has been said about strategy in approval voting.  Here are some
strategies that have been suggested:

- U/A: If the candidates are basically in two groups for you, unacceptable
and acceptable, then approve the ones who are acceptable.

- Honest: Decide what "approval" means to you.  Consider each candidate
separately and decide whether or not you approve him/her.

- Rank all the candidates first, then decide where your approval cutoff is.
 (perhaps based on polls)

- Figure out who the two front runners are, approve the one you prefer as
well as any candidates you like better than that.

These are all good, simple strategies, but perhaps it will be even simpler
than this.  I mean, in most political races there will be an incumbent,
which is a natural cutoff.  So just approve everyone you like better than
the incumbent.  As for the incumbent, approve him/her if you think he/she
is doing a good job.

In fact, this suggests a variant of approval voting that might be useful:
you could leave the incumbent off the ballot and say that if no challengers
achieve 50%, then the incumbent wins re-election.  That way, you're only
replacing the incumbent when you're "trading up", or finding someone who
most people like better than the incumbent.  With many good candidates on
the ballot, it seems like it would be much less likely for incumbents to
get re-elected.

Thoughts?

~ Andy
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