[EM] EPR, Bucklin STV, & Asset

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

On 2018-07-22 20:47, steve bosworth wrote:

>> K: On a side note, I think that redoing the method with a different initial
>> threshold is better than changing the initial threshold during the
>> process, as everybody gets to play according to the same rules. It is
>> also more complex, however.
> 
> S: If your suggested ‘threshold’ would also limit the total number of 
> weighted votes that a winner could retain, this would again needlessly 
> the qualitative wasting of some votes. By contrast, the ‘number of 
> seats/the total number of voters’ threshold of EPR does not determine 
> the upper limit of the number of weighted votes that can be retained by 
> an elected candidate.This threshold only determines in what round all 
> the next lower group of remaining evaluations must be added to the 
> currently remaining higher evaluations in order to attempt to discover 
> the next winner. EPR’s count treats all voters according to the same set 
> of rules.

(Rest to come later)

I'm not referring to a maximum limit on the weight of winners, but 
rather to what happens in this step (quoting from jpolrisk):

> Round 7 searches for the 5th winner.  However, one cannot be found even by Round 8 and even after > all the available ACCEPTABLEs have been added to the remaining 
EXCELLENTs, VERY GOODs, and GOODs.
> No evaluations of POOR or REJECT must be added to help elect any candidate. Therefore, the
> remaining winners must instead be discovered by lowering the threshold of 10 iteratively by 
> subtracting 1 (one-at-a-time) until the remaining winners are discovered.

What I'm saying is that a better approach is to consider that, whenever 
you get to the sort of exhaustion that makes this lowering of the 
threshold necessary, then instead of lowering the threshold (of 10) and 
continuing the method, you should lower it and *restart* the method.

The point is that the first few winners had a higher bar to clear (the 
threshold of 10), while the latter winners had a lower bar (required by 
that no winners are able to clear the high bar the threshold of 10 
poses). So if the bar is to be lowered, it should be lowered 
consistently for all candidates, not just for those who came in last.

I'm thinking of a situation like: suppose the threshold is x voters. 
Suppose there are a number of candidates who have EXCELLENT from x-1 
voters each, but they don't get elected because the threshold is x. EPR 
moves to the next round instead, and some candidates with X+1 number of 
VERY GOODs get elected, but it's not enough to fill s seats. After this 
point, the threshold gets lowered and some of the EXCELLENT candidates 
get elected, filling out the council; but it would be more fair to the 
voters if the count was restarted after the threshold is lowered, so 
that all the X-1 EXCELLENT candidates get elected instead.