[EM] Is there a Good Clone Independent Election Method Based on VFA Style Ballots?

[Forest Simmons]

VFA abbreviates "Vote For and
Against"

More than a decade ago I thought of using VFA syle ballot information to
declone Borda, Copeland, and Kememy-Young ..but none of them was suitable
for public proposal.

For example, VFA information allows us to construct a clone independent
"Swap Cost Mettic" that can replace the clone dependents Kendall-tau
metric, thereby resulting in a clone free version of Kemeny-Young ...
which, in turn transforms it into an election method with acceptable
properties ... but only  ncorporatimg the VFA information to create the
clone independent metric without being able to dispense with the voter
rankings ... a gasoline/ electric hybrid that cannot exist as a standalone
power source, so to speak.

However, last night it occurred to me that we can use the soap cost metric
on the space of possible candidate finish orders to make a comceptually
simple (vsry  simple in comparison with Kememy-Young) standalone election
method:

Choose the finish order most distant from its opposite.

This makes simse when you realize that the cost of a single trasposition of
a pair of candidates in the finish order is a measure of the combined
mental anguish that would result from reversing their first and last place
prferemces.

To be precise, the seap cost of reversing a single preference of X>Y to.Y>X
in the finish order is the number of nallots that voted for X times the
number that voted against Y.

If you were toouble the number of voters that voted for X or the number
that voted against Y,, you would double the total number of voters
disappoimted by the seap of the positions (in the finish order) of the
respective candidates A and B ... so the "cost" in seap cost is measured in
voter disappoiment.

In our context the greater the voter disappointment cost of reversing a
proposed finish order FO o its opposite FO', the better FO is in contrast
to FO' ... which is why we chopse the finish order that would result in the
most disappointment if it were replaced by its opposite..

An app that uses this method for making group decisions based solely on
first and last choices might catch on at the grass roots level. If so, it
would work even better in large groups where statistical laws would enhance
performance.

What do you think?

Is there a VFA organization somewhere in need of revitalization?

-fws
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/attachments/20240201/b7fe0567/attachment.htm>