[EM] [CES #6984] Re: Wow: new, simple Bucklin motivation for CMJ. So renaming to Graduated MJ.

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 09:34 PM 1/7/2013, William Waugh wrote:
>If I were a strategist for a party that has not had a plurality but 
>may be coming close to one, I would see no reason to treat any kind 
>of Bucklin election differently from an Approval election, unless I 
>am missing something.

It is an Approval election, just staged. Instant Runoff Approval 
would be pretty accurate.


>For Approval, I'd have to teach my voters to make randomized choices.

Ah, that's not necessary if the method is Bucklin. This is going too 
far. "It's Approval, therefore randomize for an intermediate choice."

>   Score would simplify the teaching by allowing the party to give 
> its fractional vote as simply a fraction rather than having to get 
> each member to extract a random number to compare to the 
> fraction.  Less math, less chance to mess up.

Bucklin *is* a score ballot. It was classically missing a single 
unapproved rating; adding that makes it a Range 4 ballot. In 
majority-seeking Bucklin, that unapproved rating wouldn't be used, 
but it could be. That is, it's fairly obvious, it might be better to 
create a majority using the unapproved --   but not "worst" ratings 
-- rather than ignoring them, lumping all unapproved candidates into 
the same rejected category.

Bucklin, of course, fails Later-No-Harm. But all those Approval 
voters who randomize and vote for the intermediate choice *are* 
"harming" the favorite, i.e., making it possible for their vote to 
cause the intermediate candidate to win. They would be "harming less" 
by casting a lower-ranked vote.

Most eligible voters in the U.S. are not party-dedicated. For a party 
to try to tell voters, at least here, how to vote, could be suicidal.

Graduated MJ is simply a somewhat more sophisticated method of 
canvassing. I remain unconvinced that it would be better than 
sum-of-votes Range analysis. But it isn't unreasonable.

By the way, we tend to assume that there is a bi-valued choice: 
Defalt min rating, or average rating wins (perhaps with some "quorum 
rule," which can get complex and which is necessarily arbitrary). Say 
the method is Range 4. It could be interesting to assign the default 
rating at 1 in stead of the minimum, zero. In a majority-required 
system, this would not create a winner, but it might help the range 
ratings to be a little higher, giving a write-in a better chance to 
make it into a runoff.

(I also don't like grades, precisely because it can suck voters into 
devaluing their vote. This is often asserted as a "problem" with 
Range entirely, that voters will do that, and it is all based on the 
idea that the votes are absolute *evaluations*. Range voting works as 
being von Neumann-Morgenstern probability-adusted utilities over the 
range of 0-1 vote. (And that is how we actually make real-world 
decisions. We deprectate and give very little "voting power" to 
improbable outcomes. Thus the argument over "independence of 
irrelevant alternatives" is interesting. Adding irrelevant 
alternatives to a range ballot can seem to shift results, but only if 
the voters don't think they are irrelevant and don't realize how the 
voting system works. A truly improbable candidate, as to winning, 
should generate no significant shift in the other votes, and we can 
roughly assume that the vast majority of voters, once they understand 
Range, will vote the full range, and will make intermediate votes, as 
they see fit, based on both relative preference and perceived relevance.)

(The MJ scoring, the Range equivalents, and the suggested "meaning."

A, 4.0, Best
B, 3.0, Good
C, 2.0, Minimum Acceptable
D, 1.0, Better than Worst
F, 0.0, Worst.

Because people *will* overvote, I have suggested an interpretation of 
rating overvotes: the average of the extremes voted. So if a voter 
marks D and F, for example, the vote would be treated as 0.5. This 
converts a 5-rating ballot (with the 0 rating being explicit as well 
as assumed for a blank), into a 9-rating system. And people could use 
it that way. It's better than tossing the votes, and it might 
actually be an improvement. Understanding this, voters who wanted to 
could vote Borda style for up to nine candidates!