[EM] Andy: Incumbent strategy

[Michael Ossipoff]

Andy:

You wrote:

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.

[endquote]

Yes, because I claim that all of our official public elections are
u/a, that strategy of approving all of the acceptables and none of the
unacceptables is the strategy that we should use in Approval.

Some Green-preferrers might think that the Democrat is acceptable (I
don't agree), and so they'll approve both. I'd expect that the number
who regard as acceptable what the Greens offer, but not what the
Democrats do, will be greater than those who, having found out what is
offered, feel the opposite--with the result that the Green would
ouitpoll the Democrat.

You continued:

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

[endquote]

My suggestion for someone who doesn't regard the election as u/a, is
to just approve the candidates whom you like and trust. Or just ask
which ones deserve an approval from you.

You continued:

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

[endquote]

Sure, if you have good information about where the voter-median, the
CW, is, then it might be most practical to approve down to that CW.

That's why I've recommended ICT or Symmetrical ICT for pre-election
informational polling.

But, as I was saying, large-scale polling is expensive and difficult
to organize. And the GPUS primary is all the pre-election
informational polling we need. The Green nominee is the candidate on
whom we should combine our votes in Plurality. And, because of the two
strategy suggestions mentioned above, I wouldn't approve anyone I like
less than the GPUS nominee.

You continued:

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

[endquote]

I don't like that one, because we might not agree on who the
frontrunners would be if people voted honestly, approving only what
they actually want. It's too easy to mis-guess the frontrunners. The
tv tells us that the frontrunners will always be the Democrat and the
Republican. If they believe that, the Progressives would always
approve the Democrat. But I don't believe it.

Theoretically, though, the frontrunner strategy is one of several
instances of Approval's better-than-expectation strategy.

You continued:

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.

[endquote]

Sure, the incumbent is tolerable rough guess about your expectation
for the election. After all, since s/he won last time, then, if you
didn't know anything else about the election, then hir merit might be
a fair guess about your expectation for the upcoming election.

...a very rough guess.  But we should do better. Suppose that the
incumbent is a Republican. The incumbent strategy would have us
approving the corrupt sleaze Democrat. Not acceptable.

But my demonstration that Approval soon homes in on the voter-median
and then stays there was based on an assumption that the incumbent is
your expectation for the upcoming election.

Forest Simmons demonstrated that too, and probably in a better way.
Myerson & Weber demonstrated it too--likewise probably in a better (if
more complicated) way. Forest's demonstration is somewhere in the EM
archives, probably during the early 2000's, or maybe the late 1990s.

You continued:

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.

[endquote]

Interesting. It doesn't sound bad. But I still prefer Approval. And of
course Approval is the natural and obvious fix for Plurality,
consisting of nothing other than the repeal of Plurality's
forced-falsification rule.

Anyway, I don't like giving the incumbent special status.

But, as I said, your suggestion doesn't sound bad, and would be a lot
better than what we have now.

But Approval is more general and simple.

Mike Ossipoff