[EM] makeshift combinations

[Richard Lung]

Forest,

Experience of new election systems in the UKconvinces me that two 
different votes in one election are a non-starter, for practical use, as 
well as in principle. A comparable situation existed with lobbying for 
the alternative vote top-up method, proposed by the supposedly 
“independent” Jenkins report. This had a covertly disreputable 
background, too lengthy to go into. But the outcome was that voters 
would be obliged to have both a preference vote and an x-vote. The 
governments own MPs would not support it. (Stuart Bell MP correctly 
predicted that “It will sink without a trace.”) But they asked 
subsequent official reports to consider it.

First up was the Kerley report for local Scottish government elections 
(recommending STV). They did not so much as sneeze at AV Top-Up, 
dismissing the very idea of an electoral system with two different kinds 
of votes. Apparently they had some strange idea that the voters matter 
in voting arrangements.

I predict that sooner or later, depending on whether reason or 
stubbornness prevail, that combining so-called approval votes with 
ranked choice voting would please no-one.

Under existing voting methods, tied to varieties of elimination counts, 
the elimination problem cannot be solved, and no definitive solution be 
possible. The only thing that can be done, under existing voting 
conventions, is to minimise the elimination problem. This is what the 
Hare system (in particular Cambridgeelections) does.

The Hare system is known from a long history of practical test, giving 
ample time for any serious short-comings to reveal themselves.

This is not the case with untested approval voting cum RCV. (I would not 
even recommend my own method without proper preliminary testing.) That 
is why you did the right thng as a tester of mathematical proficiency.

On another subject, two women friends independently could not contain 
themselves from asking me: “Richard, don’t you ever read anything but 
serious books?”

When young and energetic, when I would look at any book that caught my 
interest, as if I would live forever, I filled volumes of diaries with 
notes on books read, that were an embarrassment to me most of my adult 
life. Since then it occurred to me to publish some of them. Just out is 
“Don’t You Ever Read Anything But Serious Books?”

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1439523

Regards,

Richad Lung.


On 26/08/2023 22:27, Forest Simmons wrote:
> Richard,
>
> The department chair for my first teaching position was someone who 
> had done his master's thesis on the efficacy of True/False tests for 
> assessing student proficiency levels in mathematics.
>
> The thesis that his work seemed to support was that a well designed 
> T/F test with sufficiently many well chosen statements was just as 
> reliable statistically .(as a predictor of success on standardized 
> tests) as tests that gave students partial credit based on their 
> written progress towards the correct answers of the respective 
> "problems," etc.
>
> I never followed his advice to use them because I liked the 
> student/teacher interaction over student work ... and it was easier 
> for me to quickly come up with ten problems that would thoroughly test 
> the students' proficiency on the material in question than to 
> carefully construct a 400 statement T/F test with the same information 
> potential.
>
> But I can see the value of T/F and multiple choice tests for placing 
> multitudes of students at the right level when their last math class 
> was ten years ago, and no mathematician is available to interview them.
>
> I would compare narrowing down a field of California governor wannabes 
> to this rough placement level problem ... quick and dirty may be the 
> right bang for the buck.
>
> Best Wishes,
>
> Forest
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, Aug 26, 2023, 4:39 AM Richard Lung <voting at ukscientists.com> 
> wrote:
>
>
>     Combining an approval vote with a preference vote is an example of a
>     makeshift combination method. It cannott be justified but it is
>     attempting to do something better, not amenable to existing methods.
>
>     Approval voting is really classificatory voting. That is to say a
>     classical logic black or white, all or nothing, approval or rejection
>     vote. Yes, approval voting seems to be being tried as rejection or
>     elimination voting.
>
>     This corresponds to the first thing HG Wells said about that other
>     classificatory vote, the x-vote: We no longer have elections in this
>     country (UK) we only have Rejections. (1912. The Labour Unrest).
>
>     A preference vote covers opposites and everything in between. But
>     it is
>     only used as an election. Preference voting can, however, also be
>     used
>     in an exclusion count, including the whole range of dislikes and
>     likes.
>     That is the system I invented.
>
>     Regards,
>
>     Richard Lung.
>
>     ----
>     Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for
>     list info
>
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