[EM] RCV Challenge

[Forest Simmons]

Despite our best efforts, I'm not sure that we've yet seen or heard the
best possible deterministic, Ranked Choice Voting proposals.

In my next message I will submit the best public proposal that I can think
of in that category (the category of Universal Domain ... i.e. based purely
on Ranked Choice/Preference information ... equal rankings and truncations
allowed). Of course, anybody can easily improve on any such method by
coloring outside of the UD lines ... for example by use of explicit
approval cutoffs, scores, grades, judgments, virtual candidates, and other
devices for stratifying rank relations by relative importance/strength, as
well as probabilities, random ballot drawings, etc.

But let's temporarily put aside all of these power tools and see what we
can accomplish with screwdriver, pliers, etc.

The challenge is to make the method as simple as possible while complying
with clone independence, monotonicity, and the other most basic criteria
like Pareto, anonymity, neutrality, majority, etc.

Simplicity is in the eye of the beholder ... hard to pin down, but you know
it when you see it.... definitely not just a bunch of ad hoc rules cobbled
together to patch up an out moded second rate method from yesteryear. The
fewer seams, the better.

Simplicity includes simplicity of data summary, simplicity of computation,
simplicity of formulation/description, etc.

One antonym of simplicity is complexity ... complexity of the basic
idea/heuristic, logical complexity, computational complexity, etc.

I look forward to seeing some of your favorite methods ... original or
not.  And don't worry if they do not completely comply with the ideal
criteria I outlined above ... a really good, intuitively appealing, simple
idea can be forgiven a small transgression or two .... and could become the
germ for an even better method.

I put simplicity ahead of familiarity because a simple idea can easily
become familiar, so lack of familiarity is a temporary problem caused by a
history of poor attention to civics education.

This challenge is an opportunity for you to take one small step to help
remedy that educational deficiency!

Thanks!

-Forest
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