[EM] Approval voting election tomorrow in Fargo ND

Tue Jun 7 21:06:03 PDT 2022

What you wrote is true, but it's not the whole story:

"Problem with Approval is that it forces the voter to decide, tactically,
if they are going to hide their preference of A over B (by approving both A
and B) because they really hate Candidate C (and are worried that C might
beat B), or if they decide that C doesn't really have a chance and they
don't wanna throw away their preference for A (by not approving B)."

And

"Cardinal methods *inherently* suffer this problem of imposing
tactical voting onto voters."

The important thing is that it is a great improvement over FPTP
Plurality at no cost.

Just mark yes for the candidate you would have voted for under the
FPTP Plurality system, and also for anybody you like better.

How hard is that. If everybody did that, the result would be at least
as good as the FPTP result, and the center squeeze problem would
disappear (for example).

Equally important ... true levels of support would show.

The other thing is you get what you pay for ... Approval is cheap, so
don't expect too much.

A bicycle is cheaper than a car. A poorly designed car can do a lot of damage.

Mike Ossipoff used to say approval is like a reliable hand tool ...
Ranked Pairs is a reliable power tool ... IRV is a dangerous expensive
power tool that can unexpectedly tear apart your workmanship.

Our new thread "Star Challenge" is based on recently published VSE
simulations that show that simple combinations of rankings and ratings
perform much better than one without the other.

So far the champion is Smith,Score. But there are simpler combinations
that are very close to that, including STAR, which does only one
pairwise comparison, the runoff step between the Score Winner, and the
Score Runnerup.

This result bears out our long standing policy on the EM list that
when a score order (based on cardinal ratings) directly contradicts a
pairwise order (based on rankings) the rankings trump the ratings.

So your intuition is correct as far as it goes.

The methods that combine ordinal and cardinal information are like
predictor-corrector methods for numerical solutions of Initial Value
Problems ... a simple first order predictor like an Euler step
followed by a 2nd ordercorrector like the Trapezoid rule, makes an
improvement over either one by itself.

It's like Approval Sorted Margins. Approval is like the Euler
predictor ... it gives a rough preliminary order.

The corrections are swaps of adjacent candidates that are out of order
pairwise, beginning with the pairs with least certain Approval order,
the pairs where the approval order is most likely wrong.

If there is a Condorcet candidate, the pre-sorted preliminary order
makes no difference, otherwise the Approval order imparts valuable
"Condorcet tie" resolving information ... not perfect information, but
statistically better than nothing.

One of the unexpected bonuses is that the combination methods are
often simpler computationally and have better criteria compliances.
For example BTR-IRV and Benham greatly simplify when based on Score
ballots. Not only that they have higher VSE (Voter Satisfaction
Efficiency), but also they become summable in one pass through the
ballots, and are jrestored to monotonicity.

It's like Paul said to the Corinthians, "Neither is the man without
the woman, nor the woman without the man in the Lord."

Just Saying;-)

Forest

El lun., 6 de jun. de 2022 5:47 p. m., Forest Simmons <
forest.simmons21 at gmail.com> escribió:

> Good News!
>
> And pretty good explanation.
>
> Some negative and confusion inducing comments from IRV advocates based on
> common misconceptions were responded to.
>
> A voter said she was confused because she was not used to voting for more
> than one candidate and didn't know how it worked ... despite the simple
> instructions: "vote yes or no for each candidate; the one with the most yes
> votes will be elected."
>
> IRV advocates contribute to that kind of confusion by claiming Approval
> violates "one person, one vote."
>
> For that reason I think it would behoove us to distinguish between 'votes'
> and marks on the ballot. Instead of saying...
>
> "Vote yes or no for each candidate; the one with the most yes votes will
> be elected."
>
>  ... say ...
>
> "Mark yes or no for each candidate; the one with the most yes marks will
> be elected."
>
> For additional clarification it might help to say, "For best results, mark
> 'yes' for the candidate that would get your 'vote' if you could only mark
> one, AND also mark 'yes' for all candidates (if any) that you like better
> than that candidate."
>
> There was another confusion based the same "one person, one vote" phrase
> in supreme court rulings that became the law of the land in the sixties;
> Approval detractors in Fargo have been claiming that Approval election
> results should be counted fractionally; in other words they are
> intentionally confusing Approval Voting with Fractional Cumulative Voting.
>
> Under that burden, if all voters marked yes for their top two favorite
> candidates, then the winner could not claim more than fifty percent support
> even if she were marked yes on 100 percent of the ballots.
>
> So there is a big quarrel over how to report the results, if not over how
> to determine the winner.
>
> For IRV supporters, no method satisfies "one person, one vote," unless
> each ballot boils down to a single vote for a single candidate.
>
> To counter that claim, Approval supporters go back to the supreme court
> language as in the 1964 *Wesberry v. Sanders
> <https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesberry_v._Sanders>* decision,
>
> "...the U.S. Supreme Court declared that equality of voting—one person,
> one vote—means that "the weight and worth of the citizens' votes as nearly
> as is practicable must be the same",[12]
> <https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_man,_one_vote#cite_note-:0-13>and
> ruled that states must also draw federal congressional districts containing
> roughly equal represented populations." [from the one person one vote
> Wikipededia page]
>
> However, I agree with Martin Harper ... that it is easier, more
> informative, and less contentious to humour superstitious detractors by
> specifying which of the marked candidates gets the (one and only) vote from
> that ballot:
>
> "Mark yes or no for each candidate; your actual vote will go to the one
> (from among those that you marked 'yes') with the most yes marks from other
> voters."
>
> This rule is equivalent to the standard Approval rule, but allows us to
> distinguish (in the post election analysis) the Approval Support
> percentages, and the percentage of 'votes' received.
>
> It also highlights the importance of agreement with other voters: Approval
> Voting can be considered (primarily?) as a tool for helping like minded
> voters to pool their votes conveniently, safely, efficiently, and
> effectively.
>
> -Forest
>
>
>
>
>
> El lun., 6 de jun. de 2022 1:54 p. m., KenB <kdbearman at gmail.com>
> escribió:
>
>>
>> https://www.mprnews.org/story/2022/06/06/vote-for-everyone-you-like-fargo-tests-approval-voting
>> ----
>> Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list
>> info
>>
>
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