[EM] Comprehensive, Simple, and Informative Indicative Voting Method:: MJ is best

Tue Apr 2 12:08:24 PDT 2019

Hi Toby,
Strictly speaking, it is only possible for the relevant median-grade to be Reject.  At the same time, Reject is less likely to be the initial median result with MJ as compared with Approval.  Firstly this is because MJ offers 4 levels of approval (Excellent, Very Good, Good, and Acceptable) while  Approval offers only one.  This allows MJ to provide more relevant information for the count and makes it slightly less likely that MPs will vote tactically.  Finally, this relevant additional information also has the advantage of allowing MJ to discover the one winner out any number of potential winners -- because initially they all have the same median-grade (e.g. Reject):  One by one, one grade equal in value to the currently shared median-grade is removed from the current total held by each tied option.  This continues until only one of the previously tied options has the highest median-grade.  This winner at least has a plurality of votes higher than or equal to the current highest median-grade.
What do you think?
Steve

________________________________
From: Toby Pereira <tdp201b at yahoo.co.uk>
Sent: Tuesday, April 2, 2019 7:25 AM
To: stevebosworth at hotmail.com
Subject: Re: [EM] Comprehensive, Simple, and Informative Indicative Voting Method:: MJ is best

All options were rejected by a majority of MPs so the median grade for all options is likely to be one of the reject grades. That's all really!

On Tue, 2 Apr 2019 at 3:25, steve bosworth
<stevebosworth at hotmail.com> wrote:

Hi Toby,
Why do you characterize as "slightly-less-awful" the only option that has received an absolute majority of the grades that are higher than, or equal to, the highest median-grade received by any of the options?  Perhaps you mean that any variety of BREXIT is awful.  We'd agree about that.
In any case, like MJ, would your preferred method also guarantee the finding of an option with such majority support?  Would your preferred method prompt voters to vote with as much meaning and discernment?  Does it offer less scope for tactical voting?  Given that each grade given by every MP in Parliament would help to determine the MJ winner, would not this discover the option most likely to receive the continued support of a majority in parliament?
I look forward to your clarifications.

________________________________
From: Toby Pereira <tdp201b at yahoo.co.uk>
Sent: Monday, April 1, 2019 10:04 PM
To: steve bosworth; EM list
Subject: Re: [EM] Comprehensive, Simple, and Informative Indicative Voting Method:: MJ is best

I don't think it's a terrible idea. However, I'm not sure it's necessarily to move beyond the simplicity of approval voting in this particular situation. And that's partly because tonight (for the second time) none of the options received a majority of approvals. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-47781009<https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fuk-politics-47781009&data=02%7C01%7C%7C5a4c56501e9d4309d02108d6b73c687e%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636897867405254141&sdata=K3PSlKNcUqkzkhSyOM2SfTe%2Ba9E1b6u6X32FqxsxlJA%3D&reserved=0> And I don't think parliament would be happy using an option because it received the median rating slightly-less-awful rather than just plain-awful. If it was to be expected that several options would get over 50% approvals then MJ might be quite a useful tool to distinguish between them, but at the moment a bigger concern is to simply get one thing that the majority of parliament is behind.

Toby

________________________________
From: steve bosworth <stevebosworth at hotmail.com>
To: EM list <election-methods at electorama.com>
Sent: Monday, 1 April 2019, 21:08
Subject: [EM] Comprehensive, Simple, and Informative Indicative Voting Method:: MJ is best

Originally, Gervase Lam suggested that Approval style voting could be used in Brexit Vote in Parliament.  My response was to suggest instead that Majority Judgment (MJ) provides the most Comprehensive, Simple, and  Informative Indicative Voting Method. Please see below a more detailed explanation of how MJ works.
I'm surprised that no-one has addressed my exact suggestion that Majority Judgment (MJ) would seem to provide a superior method.

Instead, SCORE voting, using 0—100 was suggested by William.  This suggestion does not take into account that most people cannot distinguish between more than about 7 levels of desired human behavior. Balinski & Laraki discuss this (pp.171, 169, 283, 306, 310, & 389) with regard to G.A. Miller’s 1956 article: The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychological Review 63: 89-97.  This is why MJ’s use of only 6 grades from Excellent to Reject are more meaningful and discerning.  Also, these grades are more meaningful than numbers 1—6.  At the same time, unlike MJ, APPROVAL and SCORE would not guarantee the discovery of a BREXIT option that is supported by an absolute majority of all the voters' highest grades.
Please give any of your criticisms of MJ in this regard.
From: steve bosworth <stevebosworth at hotmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2019 6:24 AM
To: election-methods at lists.electorama.com
Subject: Comprehensive, simplist, and most informative Indicative Voting

Yes, Approval would work, but unlike Majority Judgment (Balinski & Laraki, Majority Judgment (2010, MIT) Approval does not guarantee finding the option most supported by an absolute majority, nor would it inform us how highly all the MPs grade each of the options.
Majority Judgment would allow the Commons to decide on one of the many options by an absolute majority as a result of counting one ballot from each of the MPs.  Each MP is simply asked to “grade” as many of the options listed as either Excellent (ideal), Very Good, Good, Acceptable, Poor, or “Reject”.  Each option not explicitly graded is counted as “Reject” by that voter.  The same grade can be given to more than one choice.
As a result, all the options will have received the same number of grades, but a different set.  The winner is the choice that has received an absolute majority of grades that are equal to, or higher than, the highest median-grade given to any of the choices.
The median-grade of each option is found as follows:
•  Place all the grades, high to low, top to bottom, in side-by-side columns, the name of each option at the top of each of these columns.
•  The median-grade for each option is the grade located half way down each column (i.e. in the middle if there is an odd number of voters, the lower middle if the number is even).
If more than one option has the same highest median-grade, the MJ winner is discovered by removing (one-by-one) any grades equal in value to this grade from each tied option’s total until only one is currently found to retain the highest remaining median-grade.
Also in contrast to ranking the options, the above Majority Judgment method does not eliminate any option before the Absolute Majority winner is discovered.  Therefore, only Majority Judgment would guarantee that a majority winner would be found.

What do you think?
Steve

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