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

[Richard Lung]

Forest,

Binomial STV allows voters to vote for and against candidates but it 
depends on the number of seats, rather than voters actively deciding 
they are for or against a candidate. Given five seats, the first five 
orders of choice count more or less for those prefered candidates. 
Preferences from 6 onwards count more and more against the candidates.

The vote looks like any other ranked choice but there are two 
symmetrical rational counts by Meek method surplus transfer.: an 
election count and a reversed preference exclusion count. This dispenses 
with conventional STV "last past the post" exclusion when the election 
surpluses run out. And dispenses with Meek quota reduction with abstentions.

All abstentions are counted, to establish the relative importance of 
election or exclusion to the voters. So this rationalised Meek gets rid 
of two weak features and adds one feature, that gives a conservation of 
preference information by including counting the abstentions.

Binomial STV also has higher orders of count that might provide 
systematic search efficiency for the seeker of representative 
information, not only representatives.

Regards,

Richard Lung.


On 01/02/2024 22:18, Forest Simmons wrote:
> 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
>
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