[EM] Yes/?/No

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

On 01/11/2020 02.03, Forest Simmons wrote:
> One way to overcome this inconvenience is for each voter to designate a
> candidate as proxy in the runoff.
> 
> Which brings us to the method that I like best: the voters designate
> proxies to resolve the question marks on their ballots. Once the
> question marks are resolved the candidate with the most yes votes is the
> same has the candidate with the fewest no votes, so no runoff is necessary.

It might not work if the proxy is more adamant than the voters, though.
Suppose you have something like the 2000 US Presidential, but the Nader
analog is even more convinced than Nader was that neither candidate is
unfit for office.

Then this candidate (the "Nader-analog") might publicly resolve that
"since I view both of my competitors as unfit for office, I will not let
votes for me go to either of them", and thus turn a ? for the
Gore-analog on a Green-analog ballot into no approval. However, his
voters might prefer the lesser evil if the election comes out to Gore vs
Bush.

ON the other hand, perhaps this isn't a problem. When the third party
hard case candidate has only fringe support, the Lesser Evil>Fringe
voters can approve of both LE and F. And when the third party has
roughly even support with the others (e.g. Burlington), then it's
unlikely that the third party candidate would be such a hard case to
begin with.