[EM] Multi-winner Approval (was Re: New Hugo (Science Fiction Award) voting method)

Mon Aug 31 20:38:06 PDT 2015

I am not sure why my previous post didn't have a right margin, so I will 
retype it.

/What about a system where the five candidates appearing on largest 
number of unique Approval ballots go on to final round of voting? If a 
bloc of voters choose candidates {A, B, C, D, E}, and no other voters 
do, then only the top candidate in that group would go on. It would 
allow a wide breadth of options in the final round, rather than a set of 
novels that appeal to just one unified group.//
//
//If there is more that one possible set with the same number of unique 
ballots, just pick the one with the highest total number of Approval 
votes. It would be single-stage elimination for the first stage, and 
fairly simple to explain.//
/
Which brought to mind a multi-winner proportional version.

1. For a number of seats previously decided upon, allow each voter to 
cast a ballot approving as many (or as few) candidates as they wish.

2. Looking at each possible set of the required number of candidates, 
choose the group appearing on the greatest number of unique ballots.

3. If there is more than one group that satisfies the criteria in 2, 
choose the group with the greatest total number of Approval votes. 
(Further tiebreakers can be added, too.)

4. Discard candidates not in the winning group. Looking at each ballot, 
divide a single vote/point/whatever equally among the remaining candidates.

5. Add up each candidate's score from these points and fractions of a point.

6. In the legislature, each person has a voting power proportional to 
their score.

This or something similar may have already proposed by someone, of 
course, but I would love to see what good and bad qualities it might 
have.  (Good might be simplicity, bad might be encouraging block voting 
or something, though I am not sure about that.)

Now it is getting late, and I am getting tired. I probably mangled 
something or messed up somewhere. :)

Mike

On 8/31/2015 1:11 PM, mrouse1 at mrouse.com wrote:
> What about a system where the five candidates appearing on largest number of*unique*  Approval ballots go on to final round of voting? If a bloc of voters choose candidates {A, B, C, D, E}, and no other voters do, then only the top candidate in that group would go on. It would allow a wide breadth of options in the final round, rather than a set of novels that appeal to just one unified group.
>
> If there is more that one possible set with the same number of unique ballots, just pick the one with the highest total number of Approval votes. It would be single-stage elimination for the first stage, and fairly simple to explain.
>
> Mike
>
>
> On 2015-08-26 18:43, Jameson Quinn wrote:
> > Yes, I was the designer of this system, and I was there at Worldcon to
> > get it passed.
> >
> > What was needed was a proportional system based on approval ballots.
> > There are of course a number of options in this vein. Within these
> > limitations, this system was designed for:
> >
> > -Relative simplicity of explanation. I found that explaining STV-like
> > systems which are top-down and so require keeping track of how "used
> > up" a ballot is were too hard to explain.
> > -Resistance to "bullet voting" strategy, since widespread use of such
> > strategy would weaken the non-slate voters against slate voters.
> >
> > It is like IRV in that it is a bottom-up elimination system. However,
> > it was in no way "based on" IRV, and in fact it differs in one key
> > regard: it looks at the whole of each ballot from step one, instead of
> > ignoring all but one of the choices on each ballot at any given time.
> >
> > I'd be happy to answer any further questions about it here.
> >
> > Jameson
> >
> > 2015-08-24 13:22 GMT-04:00 <mrouse1 at mrouse.com>:
> >
> >> That would be awesome -- there are too many emails over there to
> >> read in one sitting! :)
> >> Mike
> >>
> >> On 2015-08-24 10:49, Andy Jennings wrote:
> >>
> >> Jameson Quinn, who's on this list, was working with the Hugo awards
> >> to
> >> come up with this system.
> >>
> >> I believe he proposed simple systems first, but several wrinkles
> >> came
> >> up which necessitated the complexity.
> >>
> >> I'll email him and see if I can get him to chime in here.
> >>
> >> On Mon, Aug 24, 2015 at 8:29 AM, <mrouse1 at mrouse.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> As an addendum, they are calling this method “single divisible
> >> vote with least popular elimination," which I haven't heard of
> >> before.
> >>
> >> Mike
> >>
> >> On 2015-08-24 04:06, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
> >> On 08/24/2015 02:27 AM, Michael Rouse wrote:
> >>
> >> I'm not sure how many people here are fans of science fiction, but
> >> there
> >> was a big brouhaha at this years awards (which I'll ignore), and
> >> one of
> >> the results was the proposal of a new method of choosing winners:
> >>
> >> *Short Title: E Pluribus Hugo (Out of the Many, a Hugo)*
> >> Moved, to amend section 3.8 (Tallying of Nominations), section 3.9
> >> (Notification and Acceptance), and section 3.11 (Tallying of Votes)
> >> as
> >> follows:
> >>
> >> [snip]
> >>
> >> So this is basically cumulative voting IRV? I suppose it's better
> >> than
> >> ordinary IRV, but if they're using an Approval ballot, why not just
> >> use
> >> Approval to begin with?
> >>
> >> Do they want a proportional representation method or a majoritarian
> >> one?
> >> The reference to avoiding slates seem to suggest to me that they
> >> want a
> >> proportional representation method, or at least something that is
> >> closer
> >> to a PR method.
> >>
> >> As a positional elimination method, it could suffer path
> >> dependence.
> >> Consider someone nominating (voting for) X, Y, and Z. Say now that
> >> Y is
> >> very narrowly eliminated at some point, but if the person had voted
> >> for
> >> X and Y alone, he would have given enough of his vote to Y to have
> >> kept
> >> Y from being eliminated. So the claim that "[i]n other words, you
> >> can
> >> safely nominate anything you feel is Hugo-worthy" doesn't seem to
> >> be
> >> strictly true. You can safely nominate anything that is relatively
> >> unpopular, but if it gets popular enough, it may draw enough
> >> support
> >> away from the others you would also like to nominate.
> >>
> >> If I were to construct a majoritarian ballot system with Approval
> >> ballots, I would just use Approval. There's a similar "drawing away
> >> from
> >> other popular candidates" problem (the chicken/Burr thing), but
> >> Approval
> >> is much simpler and doesn't repeated iteration.
> >>
> >> For PR, the question is much harder. With computers, you could use
> >> PAV,
> >> sequential PAV or birational voting. However, the non-sequential
> >> ones
> >> require a lot of recounts and are probably not feasible for manual
> >> elections. Sequential ones are simpler but the proportionality
> >> might not
> >> be obvious.
> >>
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