[EM] The Problem with Score Voting and Approval Voting

[Richard Lung]

I agree with all this.
It was said long ago, with regard to many votes per seats and cumulative 
voting, as by Enid Lakeman: Multiple votes count against each other. 
Single transferable voting is the way to go.

Richard L.

On 22/06/2019 00:29, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
>
> i am not a member of the RangeVoting list so i do not think my 
> response will post there.
>
> John Moser reiterates the complaint that I have always had with Score 
> Voting (i think that term is a better semantic than "Range"), which, 
> perhaps surprizingly, is also the end complaint i have with Approval 
> Voting, *even* *though* Score Voting requires too much information 
> from voters and Approval Voting collects too little information from 
> voters (as does FPTP).
>
> Score voting requires more thought (and expertise, as if they are 
> Olympic figure-skating judges) from voters for them to determine 
> exactly how much they should score a particular candidate.  But the 
> real problem for the voter is that the voter is a partisan.  They know 
> they wanna score their favorite candidate a "10".  They may like their 
> second favorite, but they do not want their second choice to beat 
> their first choice.  But they may hate any of the remaining candidates 
> and they sure-as-hell want either their first or second choice to beat 
> any of the remaining candidates.  So their tactical burden in the 
> voting booth is "How much do I score my second choice?"
>
> And Approval Voting has the same problem, but for the opposite reason 
> that Approval Voting is less "expressive" than Ranked-Choice.  The 
> voter has the same tactical decision to make regarding their second 
> favorite candidate: "Do I approve my second choice or not?"
>
> These tactical decisions would also be affected by how likely the 
> voter believes (from the pre-election polls) that the race will end up 
> essentially between their first and second-choice candidates.  If the 
> voter thinks that will be the case, the partisan voter is motivated to 
> score his/her favorite a "10" and the second favorite a "0" (or 
> approve the favorite and not approve the second choice).
>
> This really essentially comes down to a fundamental principle of 
> voting and elections in a democracy, which is: "One person - one 
> vote."  If I really really like Candidate A far better than Candidate 
> B and you prefer Candidate B only slightly more than your preference 
> for Candidate A, then my vote for A>B should count no more (nor less) 
> than your vote for B>A.  Even if your feelings about the candidates is 
> not as strong as mine, your franchise should be as strong as my 
> franchise.  But Score Voting explicitly rejects that notion and in 
> doing so, will lead to a burden of tactical voting for regular voters.
>
> Only the ordinal ranked-ballot extracts from voters the "right amount" 
> of information.  If a voter ranks A>B>C, all that voter is saying is 
> that if the election were held between A and B, this voter is voting 
> for A.  If the election is between A and C, this voter is voting for 
> A.  And if the election ends up being between B and C, this voter 
> votes for B.  That's **all** that this ballot says.  We should not 
> read more into it and we should not expect more information from the 
> voter such as "How much more do you prefer A over C than your 
> preference of A over B?"  It shouldn't matter.
>
> my $0.02 .
>
> r b-j
>
>
> ---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
> Subject: Re: [EM] High Resolution Inferred Approval version of ASM
> From: "John" <john.r.moser at gmail.com>
> Date: Fri, June 21, 2019 2:14 pm
> To: "Felix Sargent" <felix.sargent at gmail.com>
> Cc: RangeVoting at yahoogroups.com
> "Forest Simmons" <fsimmons at pcc.edu>
> "EM" <election-methods at lists.electorama.com>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> > Cardinal voting collects higher-resolution data, but not necessarily
> > precise data.
> >
> > Let's say you score candidates:
> >
> > A: 1.0
> > B: 0.5
> > C: 0.25
> > D: 0.1
> >
> > In reality, B is 90% as favored as A. C is 70% as favored as B. The real
> > numbers would be:
> >
> > A: 1.0
> > B: 0.9
> > C: 0.63
> > D: etc.
> >
> > How would this happen?
> >
> > Cardinal: I approve of A 90% as much as B.
> >
> > Natural and honest: I prefer A to win, and I am not just as happy with B
> > winning, or close to it. I feel maybe half as good about that? B is
> > between C and D and I don't like C, but I like D less.
> >
> > Strategic: even voting 0.5 for B means possibly helping B beat A, 
> but what
> > if C wins...
> >
> > The strategic nightmare is inherent to score and approval systems. When
> > approvals aren't used to elect but only for data, people are not 
> naturally
> > inclined to analyze a score representing their actual approval.
> >
> > Why?
> >
> > Because people decide by simulation. Simulation of ordinal preference is
> > easy: I like A over B. Even then, sometimes you can't seem to decide who
> > is better.
> >
> > Working out precisely how much I approve of A versus B is harder. It 
> takes
> > a lot of effort and the basic simulation approach responds heavily 
> to how
> > good you feel about A losing to B, not about how much B satisfies 
> you on a
> > scale of 0 to A.
> >
> > Score and approval voting source a high-error, low-confidence 
> sample. It's
> > like recording climate data by licking your finger and holding it in the
> > wind each day, then writing down what you think is the temperature.
> > Someone will say, "it's more data than warmer/colder trends!" While
> > ignoring that you are not Mercury in a graduated cylinder.
> >
>
> --
>
> r b-j rbj at audioimagination.com
>
> "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
>
>
> ----
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