[EM] Approval-Strategy article at CES website

[Michael Ossipoff]

I'd like to comment on the article's strategy-suggestions. My comments will
be interspersed below,  demarkated  above & below by a line of
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Introduction

Tactical voting is when voters don’t cast purely honest ballots. While
voters do this to a limited extent with approval voting (link is external)
<http://approval-voting>, the voting system still behaves remarkably well.
For instance, voters can always express their honest favorite. And choosing
just one candidate (bullet voting) only occurs in limited situations.

Below is how approval voting strategy is likely to play out in a variety of
common scenarios.
Polling Assumption

Since there’d be approval voting, there’d also be approval polling. It
would make no sense to do polling framed in plurality when a different
system is used; it would cease to be informative.
Utility Assumption for Hypotheticals

In these cases, let’s assume you hate Candidate Awful, are okay with
Candidate Better, and love Candidate Classy. Let’s give them honest utility
values (we’re rating them on a 0-10 scale):

   - Awful: 0
   - Better: 6
   - Classy: 10

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{Classy, Better} is a top-set, for you.

You should approve both.

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Polling Assumption

Since there’d be approval voting, there’d also be approval polling. It
would make no sense to do polling framed in plurality when a different
system is used; it would cease to be informative.


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I don't agree. Either Brams or Fishburn or both wrote a paper suggesting an
Approval-poll to provide tactical informaton. But such information could
only come from a poll that asked people to indicate their favorite, or
better-yet,their merit-ranking.

The 2nd election, the binding one, is, by assumption, intended to benefit
from the information from the first poll. But the 1st poll, if by Approval,
is either 0-info, or has ulnreliable, guessed, predictive information. Then
why would it indicate winnability in the 2nd vote?

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Approval Voting Example #1

If approval polls:

   - Awful: 50%
   - Better: 50%
   - Classy: 30%

You want to vote for Better and Classy here.


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Yes.

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You vote for Better because you want Better to beat Awful. Classy doesn’t
have a shot, but you vote for her anyway to show your support and give her
ideas more legitimacy.
Approval Voting Example #2

If approval polls:

   - Awful: 50%
   - Better: 50%
   - Classy: 50%

You still vote for Better and Classy.

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Yes.

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You don’t vote for Classy alone because you have a strong preference for
Better against Awful. By only voting for Better or Classy, you risk Awful
winning against both of them.
Approval Voting Example #3

If approval polls:

   - Awful: 30%
   - Better: 50%
   - Classy: 50%

You actually only vote for Classy here.


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I disagree.


{Classy, Better} is your top-set. Electing from that set matters more than
the matter of _which_ of is members wins.

In fact, Awful's win-probability is 60% as great as those of Better &
Classy.  You don't want to take that chance of Awful outpolling Classy. So
you approve your top-set.

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When Awful is enough out of the race, you can narrow your sights against
Better and show your support for Classy.


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But Awful isn't fully out of the race.

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When exactly do you only vote for Classy? It depends on how far out of the
competition Better is. And it depends on how much you dislike Better along
with how likable Better is compared to Awful. If Awful and Better are
similarly unlikable (you’re indifferent to which one wins), a voter may be
more inclined to vote for Classy alone when she is closer to winning.


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Of course. That's why you wouldn't approve Hillary if we were holding the
November 2016 election by Approval.

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Approval Voting Example #4

If approval polls:

   - Awful: 50%
   - Better: 30%
   - Classy: 50%

Again, your only vote is for Classy here.

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Disagree.

Awful has a 50% chance of outpolling Classy, and, even if Better's
win-probability is slightly less than that of Awful & Classy, you should
still approve (only) your entire top-set, which is {Classy, Better}.

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It’s not Better that’s giving competition to Awful anymore; it’s Classy
competing against Awful. Whether you include Better in the vote would
depend on how much you actually supported Better's views. Like in the first
example where Classy had 30% and was a token vote, support for Better in
this case is also a token vote because it likely won’t change the outcome.
So, if you wanted to give support for Better because of some view he had
that you liked, then you could get away with supporting him and Classy.
[...]
Conclusion

These examples remove the argument that approval voting regresses to
plurality voting (via bullet voting).


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Of course.

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There are numerous scenarios (as shown above) when bullet voting simply
makes no strategic sense. But notice that when you do only vote for one
candidate, it’s done in a way that’s not damaging to the outcome. Also,
factoring in who is likely to win is something we do anyway when
considering what to do under plurality voting. But with approval voting, we
just have more options on what we can do with that information. Also note
that it was always to your advantage to vote your favorite. That will
ALWAYS be true with approval voting.

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Disregard who you think is likely to win. Nearly everyone's "information"
about that comes from disinformational, wealthy-agenda media, and should be
completely disregarded.

Though honest Internet polls give us a hint about who's the CWs (Jill
Stein), for nearly everyone, it's a 0-info election. Anyway, as i've
mentioned elsewhere, in our distorted electoral-system, voters who want
something better instead of the Republocrat status-quo have a top-set & a
bottom-set. When you do, you should approve (only) your top-set.

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Also, when there are more candidates, there are more variations on what to
do. Though the concepts are the same. Expectantly, with more candidates,
voters will also approve of more candidates on average.  There may also be
cross-support from multiple independents/third parties that share certain
views.


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Yes.

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Finally, even with “tactical” voting, approval voting will nearly always
choose the candidate that can beat everyone in a head-to-head race. This is
called a Condorcet winner. Approval voting does not achieve this
flawlessly, but it does an excellent job nonetheless. It is also argued
that when approval voting doesn’t select the Condorcet winner, it does so
for good reason.


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Yes.

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More on this topic here.
Topic:
Tactical Voting <https://electology.org/topic/tactical-voting>
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