[EM] Approval & disapproval voting

Sun Aug 27 06:55:59 PDT 2023

On second thoughts, would this not lead to tactical voting? I imagine 
that a voter who both approved and disapproved would have more influence 
than one who only approved or only disapproved.
    CJC

On 27/08/2023 09:52, Colin Champion wrote:
> I think I prefer approval/disapproval to plain approval, since it 
> elicits more information from voters and they will be delighted to get 
> their antipathies off their chest.
>    CJC
>
> On 26/08/2023 19:46, Ralph Suter wrote:
>> 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>
>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; Format="flowed"
>>>
>>> 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:
>>> <CANUDvfq1Sn4SfivQ6d1iR1skodWsShrQNg8pSAe8jzKbcZ1VGg at mail.gmail.com>
>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>>>
>>> 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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