[EM] Approval & disapproval voting

Sat Aug 26 11:46:03 PDT 2023

Disapproval voting may seem functionally equivalent to approval voting. 
However, disapproval voting would make it more difficult to "bullet 
vote" because that would require disapproving every candidate except 
one's favorite. It would also be more awkward for candidates to urge 
their supporters to disapprove every candidate but themselves.

One promising way to narrow down large fields of candidates may be to 
combine approval with disapproval. Voters could approve any candidates 
they found at least somewhat acceptable and disapprove candidates they 
found unacceptable. Many voters would leave candidates they were 
uncertain about unmarked. Furthermore, if voters were given short 
descriptions of all candidates and their political views, most voters 
would likely not have much trouble deciding which candidates were 
acceptable, which ones were unacceptable, and which ones they were 
uncertain about. If I were me, I would disapprove not only candidates I 
found clearly unacceptable but also candidates who described themselves 
so vaguely as to make it impossible to make a reasonable guess as to how 
they would perform if elected.

Any thoughts?

-Ralph Suter
> Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2023 22:51:40 +0200
> From: Colin Champion <colin.champion at routemaster.app>
> To: EM <election-methods at lists.electorama.com>
> Subject: Re: [EM] Condorcet meeting
> Message-ID: <d337b1f5-45e6-e7fa-7f78-0c28cddce0e7 at routemaster.app>
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>
> I?m not persuaded of approval voting. My guess is that voters will
> bullet-vote for the candidate they like best among those they know
> about; candidates will encourage bullet voting on their own behalf;
> pundits will have nothing better to say, and voters will have no motive
> to award more than the minimum number of approvals.
> ?? A danger of quadratic and entropic measures is that they don't
> impose the constraint that the number of survivors has to be small
> enough to make ranked voting effective on the second round.
> ?? CJC
>
> On 25/08/2023 15:05, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
>> On 2023-08-25 01:50, Forest Simmons wrote:
>>> I agree with Kristofer that Approval is plenty good for the narrowing
>>> down phase.
>>>
>>> Your favorite pundits and candidates will definitely make known their
>>> recommendations.? Trust your own judgment and gut, as you collate and
>>> cull out their llists of recommendations.
>>>
>>> If there are going to be only six finalists, that doesn't mean you
>>> can only approve six or that you have to approve more than one.
>>>
>>> My rule is to approve my favorite as well as everybody else that I
>>> like almost as much.
>>>
>>> Here's an idea for deciding on n, the number of finalists after the
>>> approval ballots have been tallied:
>>>
>>> For this purpose, temporarily count the ballots fractionally, and let
>>> f(X) be the fraction of the total that X gets in this tally ... so
>>> that the f(X) values sum to unity.
>>>
>>> The value of n should be the reciprocal of the sum of the squares of
>>> the f(X) vslues... the standard formula for the minimum number of
>>> seats that would be acceptable for proportional representation of a
>>> diverse population.
>> Another option is to use the exponential of the Shannon entropy:
>> https://electowiki.org/wiki/Effective_number_of_parties#Entropy_measure
>>
>> -km
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> Message: 2
> Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2023 15:59:00 -0700
> From: Forest Simmons <forest.simmons21 at gmail.com>
> To: Kristofer Munsterhjelm <km_elmet at t-online.de>
> Cc: EM <election-methods at lists.electorama.com>
> Subject: Re: [EM] Situations where IIA failure may be natural
> Message-ID:
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>
> This line of thought reminds me of the kind of ballot used in Jobst's
> MaxParC:
>
> Next to each candidate's name you specify the total approval that 
> candidate
> would have to have from the other voters before you would get on board.
>
> Why should other vogers' support affect your support?
>
> That's also implicit in the Nash Lottery where the candidate probabilites
> are adjusted to maximize the product of the (score) ballot expectations.
>
> It turns out that this maximization rule requires that (1) each voter's
> total contribution to the lottery probability be 1/n, where n is the 
> number
> of voters, and (2l that contribution be allocated to the respective
> candidates' winning probabilities in joint proportion to the ballot 
> ratings
> and the (equilibrium) probabilities of the respective candidates.
>
> Nash's "efficient" allocation of resources general rule requires the
> allocations to be proportional to the respective (expected) payoff shares
> ... which is why we named this election method the "Nash Lottery".
>
> Roughly speaking, the more popular something is, the more of your capital
> (eg your vote) you should devote to it ... according to Nash's general 
> rule
> of efficient allocation.
>
> This rule is different from, but related to, the rational strategy of
> maximizing the likelihood of your vote being pivotal.
>
> MaxParC's allocation is closer to optimal rational strategy than is Nash's
> allocation. I can elaborate on this comment if there is serious interest.
>
> fws
>
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Aug 25, 2023, 5:20 AM Kristofer Munsterhjelm 
> <km_elmet at t-online.de>
> wrote:
>
>> IIA failure is generally considered to be a bad thing. But perhaps
>> sometimes "all things equal" is not so!
>>
>> Consider the restaurant joke: Sidney is offered a choice of apple pie
>> and blueberry, and says "I'll have apple". Then the waitress says "Oh,
>> we also have cherry". "Well, in that case, I'll take blueberry". This
>> seems completely unreasonable.
>>
>> But here's a variant. Suppose I'm a fan of desserts that are difficult
>> to make, like (just picking something here) baked Alaska and meringue
>> pie. But I know that they're easy to get wrong and so I'll settle with
>> apple pie as a good dessert that's easy to make.
>>
>> I'm visiting a restaurant with generally good reviews and I ask what
>> desserts they have. They say "there's meringue pie and apple pie". I'm
>> not willing to risk, despite their good reviews, that they can pull off
>> the meringue properly, so I say "okay, I'll have apple pie". Then the
>> waiter says "Oh, hang on, we also have baked Alaska".
>>
>> Now I may reason: given the good reviews, and that they have multiple
>> difficult desserts, more people may have tried the difficult ones; so if
>> they weren't any good, it wouldn't have been reviewed so well. So I say
>> "well, in that case, I'll take the meringue".
>>
>> In a political context, the closest thing would be something like: I've
>> moved to a new town, and there are local elections with some left and
>> right parties. The parties' candidates seem sensible at first glance,
>> but they could just be tailoring their message to the audience. Now if
>> I'm a left-wing voter (say), and there are multiple left-wing parties,
>> this may indicate that there's a demand for left-of-center policies, and
>> thus that the left-wing candidates are more likely to mean what they're
>> saying, thus making it less risky to support one of them.
>>
>> It's kind of tenuous, but still I thought it's an interesting example :-)
>>
>> If it's at least somewhat realistic, it could bring more subtle dynamics
>> into elections, no matter whether they pass IIA or not. For instance, if
>> voters are likely to consider a particular political position more
>> sincere if there are multiple parties based on it, then that's an
>> obvious (theoretical) clone failure. On the other hand, maybe not so
>> much: the inference works precisely because it's hard to set up proxy
>> parties that seem legitimate. If that becomes easy, then there's little
>> value in the observation, and the voters would stop judging the number
>> of parties as an indication of the strength of the position.
>>
>> -km
>> ----
>> Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list
>> info
>>
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> Message: 3
> Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2023 19:23:22 -0400
> From: Michael Garman <michael.garman at rankthevote.us>
> To: Colin Champion <colin.champion at routemaster.app>
> Cc: EM <election-methods at lists.electorama.com>
> Subject: Re: [EM] Condorcet meeting
> Message-ID:
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>
> Colin,
>
> Your concern about approval voting is corroborated, at least anecdotally,
> by evidence from Fargo, ND -- the only US jurisdiction to use approval in
> general elections. In 2022, 60%
> <https://citizendata.com/tracking-voter-support-for-electoral-reforms/> of
> voters reported voting for just one candidate in the field of seven. At
> least two candidates (at least according to quotes in an article
> <https://democracysos.substack.com/p/what-fargo-reveals-about-approval>from
> Rob Ritchie) encouraged their supporters to bullet vote for them.
>
> MJG
>
> On Fri, Aug 25, 2023 at 4:52?PM Colin Champion <
> colin.champion at routemaster.app> wrote:
>
>> I?m not persuaded of approval voting. My guess is that voters will
>> bullet-vote for the candidate they like best among those they know about;
>> candidates will encourage bullet voting on their own behalf; pundits will
>> have nothing better to say, and voters will have no motive to award more
>> than the minimum number of approvals.
>> A danger of quadratic and entropic measures is that they don't impose
>> the constraint that the number of survivors has to be small enough to 
>> make
>> ranked voting effective on the second round.
>> CJC
>>
>> On 25/08/2023 15:05, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
>>
>> On 2023-08-25 01:50, Forest Simmons wrote:
>>
>> I agree with Kristofer that Approval is plenty good for the narrowing 
>> down
>> phase.
>>
>> Your favorite pundits and candidates will definitely make known their
>> recommendations. Trust your own judgment and gut, as you collate and cull
>> out their llists of recommendations.
>>
>> If there are going to be only six finalists, that doesn't mean you can
>> only approve six or that you have to approve more than one.
>>
>> My rule is to approve my favorite as well as everybody else that I like
>> almost as much.
>>
>> Here's an idea for deciding on n, the number of finalists after the
>> approval ballots have been tallied:
>>
>> For this purpose, temporarily count the ballots fractionally, and let 
>> f(X)
>> be the fraction of the total that X gets in this tally ... so that 
>> the f(X)
>> values sum to unity.
>>
>> The value of n should be the reciprocal of the sum of the squares of the
>> f(X) vslues... the standard formula for the minimum number of seats that
>> would be acceptable for proportional representation of a diverse
>> population.
>>
>>
>> Another option is to use the exponential of the Shannon entropy:
>> https://electowiki.org/wiki/Effective_number_of_parties#Entropy_measure
>>
>> -km
>>
>>
>> ----
>> Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list
>> info
>>
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