[EM] MAV on electowiki

[Chris Benham]

Jameson,
 
"...But I don't think it's realistic..."
 
I don't think any of the "multiple majorities" scenarios are very realistic. Irrespective of how they are resolved,
all voters who regard one or more of the viable candidates as unacceptable will have a strong incentive to top-rate all the candidates they regard as acceptable, out of fear that an unacceptable candidate gets a majority before their vote can help all the acceptable ones.
 
I still say that your suggestion only increases that incentive (even though maybe more psychologically than likely to cause extra actual post-election regret).
 
Forget about using the mechanism for resolving the (probably very rare) multiple-majorities scenario to try to gain some whiff of "later-no-harm".
 
BTW, the "Majority Choice Approval" Bucklin-like method using ratings (or grading) ballots, simply elected the candidate whose majority tally was the biggest. I also prefer that to your suggestion. It and yours are simpler to count than the Mike Ossipoff idea I support.
 
I'm very glad to hear you think IBIFA is a great method.
I'll stop quibbling about how you classify it.
 
"Condorcet is too complex."
 
Does that mean that you don't care that it fails FBC?Condorcet//Approval is pretty simple (and IMO quite good).

Am I right in assuming that you only like methods that meet FBC or Condorcet and maybe Mono-raise? And/or are biased towards electing centrists?  And for some or all of these reasons you don't like IRV?

Chris Benham
 

Jameson Quinn wrote (27 June 2013):

2013/6/27 Chris Benham <cbenhamau at yahoo.com.au>

Jameson,
>
>
>"I don't see it..."
>
>Say on an ABCD grading ballot you give your Lesser Evil X a B, and then in the second round both X and  your Greater Evil Y reach the majority threshold. In that case you obviously might have cause to regret that you didn't give X an A. 

OK, I see what you're saying now.

But I don't think it's realistic. If X and Y both reach a majority at B, then there are some voters giving both of them a B or above. This looks a lot more like a chicken dilemma situation between two similar frontrunners, than like a situation where X versus Y is a gaping difference which justifies the use of a just-in-case strategy for a low-probability occurrence. Especially because, in a chicken dilemma situation, multiple majorities would tend to slide down towards the second-to-bottom rating, not up at the second-to-top one. 

>
>That is why your suggestion makes it (even) less safe to not simply give all the acceptable candidates an A. 
>
>"I think that's [IBIFA] a great method, but I would classify it as "improved Condorcet" rather than "Bucklin-like".
>
>No. There isn't any pairwise component in the algorithm, and unlike the "Improved Condorcet" methods it doesn't directly aim to come as close as possible to meeting Condorcet without violating Favorite Betrayal. 

There is no pairwise component in the narrowest sense, but it still is only summable at (R-1)*(N²), which is actually worse than a regular Condorcet method.

Again, I think this method would deliver excellent results, and I see why it is in certain ways akin to a Bucklin or median method. But its quasi-pairwise counting complexity still makes me see it as more similar to improved Condorcet methods than to Bucklin ones. 


>
>But another method I support is in that category, "TTPBA//TR".  Mike Ossipoff  promoted it as "Improved Condorcet, Top"  (or ICT). 
>
>http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2012-January/029577.html 
>

Right, there's a lot of good methods out there. Any of these would satisfy me as more resistant to strategy than either Condorcet or Score. And those two in turn are quite satisfactory as being at least as good as approval with more expressivity, and approval is satisfactory as being a giant and strict improvement over plurality. Great. 

And I like to talk about the relative merits of each proposal here on the list.

But if we talk like this in front of non-mathematical voters, we'll only turn them off. We need simple proposals. Approval is step one; most of us agree on that. But some voters, like Bruce Gilson, will never be satisfied with approval because it doesn't feel expressive enough.  

So I think it's worth having a second option to offer. To me, pitching Score feels dishonest: "Look at this great system! Amazing great things it can do! (But watch out, if you vote other than approval-style, you'll probably regret it.)" Condorcet is too complex. I want a simple, good system. MAV would fit the bill. If you have another proposal that would, then the way to get me onto your side is to demonstrate that it has more supporters than just you. That goes for you, Chris, and also for you, Abd. 

Jameson
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/attachments/20130628/f2ee1f14/attachment-0004.htm>