[EM] The successful repeal of Approval by the Dartmouth Board of Trustees

[Kevin Venzke]

Hi,




>________________________________
> De : Gervase Lam <gervase.lam at group.force9.co.uk>
>À : election-methods at lists.electorama.com 
>Envoyé le : Dimanche 27 janvier 2013 16h49
>Objet : [EM] The successful repeal of Approval by the Dartmouth Board of Trustees
> 
>I was looking through the Approval Voting article and noticed that it
>mentioned that in 2009 the Dartmouth Board of Trustees had Approval
>successfully repealed.
>
>It quotes an article in the web saying: "When the alumni electorate
>fails to take advantage of the approval voting process, the three
>required Alumni Council candidates tend to split the majority vote,
>giving petition candidates an advantage."
>
>
I think that quote states the issue exactly.



>There is a link to the article.
>
><http://thedartmouth.com/2009/04/03/opinion/verbum/>
>
>Can anybody give any further background on this?  The details in the
>article look a bit sparse.
>
>I think that the reason for the Approval failure was due to the "three
>required Alumni Council candidates".  But I don't really know.
>
>Can somebody comment in further detail on why Approval was unsuccessful
>in this case?
>

I don't have any knowledge of this outside the article but it sounds like voters
are either not adequately informed about candidate viability or weren't using
ideal strategies.

The fact that they had to nominate a minimum number of candidates should
not pose a problem for Approval provided that voters are informed and use
good strategy.

To be more specific, it sounds like those not voting for petition candidates
had no idea they needed to be concerned about them winning. If among the
three nominated candidates nobody was even getting majority approval 

from among "non-petition candidate voters" then most likely that also reflects
badly on the strategies voters used.

But that depends on an issue space assumption (or something similar)... If
there is no issue space and everyone just voted for their favorite, it could be bad
information, but it could also simply be something that can happen under Approval,
that nobody feels it's worth propping up one's second choice.


It does sound like the Board of Trustees did not like the winners, but I
certainly don't get the impression that the winners were "good" ones. If Approval
doesn't work in some setting then I guess you have no choice but to not use
it.


Kevin
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