[EM] Yes/?/No

[robert bristow-johnson]

> On 10/31/2020 9:03 PM Forest Simmons <fsimmons at pcc.edu> wrote:
> 
> 
> Approval is one of the easiest election methods to explain and to understand; the ballots are identical to traditional FPP ballots except the instructions now say to mark the names of all of the candidates that you like instead of only one of them. As before the winner is the candidate with the greatest number of likes.
> 
> But what about the candidates that you just like a little bit? Do you include them or not? Where do you draw the line between like and not like?
> 

i've been trying for a couple years to get the Election Science people to answer that simple question.  should a voter approve of their second choice or not?  there is no simple answer and the voter is burdened with the task of tactical voting.

> Lots of perfectly adequate advice has been given on this topic, including "Approve everybody you definitely like better than the FrontRunner, including the FrontRunner herself if you definitely like her or if her strongest challenger is definitely worse than she is."
> 
> But trying to apply this excellent advice to a long list of candidates can be a very daunting task for the typical voter.
> 

which is, in my opinion, the fatal flaw of Approval or any Cardinal system.  how much does one rate their second choice candidate?

> A much easier task would be the following: write "yes" next to the names of the candidates that you definitely like, write "no" next to the names of the candidates that you definitely dislike, and put a "?" next to the remaining names.
> 

or, instead, we could just use a ranked ballot and rank the candidates in order of your preference.


-- 

r b-j                  rbj at audioimagination.com 

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."