[EM] Definite Approval/Disapproval

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

On 06.05.2022 06:19, Forest Simmons wrote:
> There were several 3-slot methods I was considering when I started this
> thread, but the main one was a version of median judgment first proposed
> by Andy Jennings in his dissertstion more than a decade ago. A few years
> ago Adrien Fabre  independently published the method as "Usual
> Judgment." And last month I discovered the method independently in the
> case of three judgment categories. 
> 
> As soon as I made a graphic available showing the helical ramp
> interpolation that characterizes the method, the versions of Jennings
> and Fabre were brought to my attention. Both of them contemplated more
> than three categories. 
> 
> A Wikipedia article (Highest Median Voting Rules) comparing various
> median judgment methods (rightly) affirms that among the known median
> judgment methods, Usual Judgment dominates the others in criteria
> compliances  ...  resolving nagging imperfections (lack of Reverse
> Symmetry and Participation compliances) of Majority Judgment, for example.
> 
> However, the article pointed out that the perfection of Usual Judgment,
> especially in the intricacies of its general case tie breaking
> procedure, might put too high a demand on the attention span of the
> average voter.
> 
> This kind of "problem" is a public relations problem only for methods
> whose proponents make too big a deal of the elegance of the arcane
> intricacies that do not concern the lay citizen. 
> 
> When someone picks up a proposal like MAM, for example, from this EM
> list and tries to sell it to the public without filtering out the
> technical discussions designed to persuade the other EM experts ... Big
> Mistake!

For MAM, I think I would put it like this: Candidates are arranged into
one-on-one match-ups like runoffs where the candidate who would win a
runoff with only the two wins. If there is a candidate who wins every
runoff he's part of, he is elected. Otherwise, landslides count more
than close runoffs in determining the winner.

It would probably be a good idea to also mention that there's been a
beats-all candidate in every ranked election known so far. (Except
possibly one actual runoff election in Romania, maybe? -- but that
wasn't a ranked election.)

I'm a theoretician, not a public activist, so I imagine my description
could be polished further :-)

The truly tough methods to describe would be things like fpA-fpC where
the rules seem to be just pulled out of the air with no rhyme or reason,
unless you happen to know that it makes the method satisfy some
desirable criterion. Or Sinkhorn or Keener, which are incomprehensible
without a lot of linear algebra.

-km