[EM] The Problem with Score Voting and Approval Voting

[Greg Dennis]

Agreed. My favorite paper on this topic is Niemi, 1984:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1955800

Greg


On Sun, Jun 23, 2019, 10:26 AM Richard Lung <voting at ukscientists.com> wrote:

> 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> <john.r.moser at gmail.com>
> Date: Fri, June 21, 2019 2:14 pm
> To: "Felix Sargent" <felix.sargent at gmail.com> <felix.sargent at gmail.com>
> Cc: RangeVoting at yahoogroups.com
> "Forest Simmons" <fsimmons at pcc.edu> <fsimmons at pcc.edu>
> "EM" <election-methods at lists.electorama.com>
> <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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