[EM] Open letter to STAR voting promoters

[Chris Benham]

Robert,

> What rhyme or reason is used to determine where the Approval cutoff is?

The idea is to give the voters as much freedom to rank among unapproved 
candidates as among approved ones.

Also it is supposed to be analogous with grades children are given at 
school, where A B C is a "pass" and D E F is a "fail".  It shouldn't be 
kept a secret from the voters that this is how their grading will be 
interpreted.

I'm not necessarily a huge fan of this particular balloting rule. I find 
it a bit too restrictive.  If there are five candidates I should be free 
to strictly rank all of them and approve all but one.

But I do very much like the idea of Condorcet methods using some sort of 
unlimited ranking ballot with an explicit approval cutoff (and meeting 
the Double Defeat criterion).

But you are apparently allergic to that idea.  Do you think this 
attitude of yours would be widespread in the US?    Haven't a lot of 
people got accustomed to giving out simple  "Like/Dislike" binary 
ratings on the internet?

Chris B.


On 6/06/2024 6:00 am, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
>
>> On 06/05/2024 8:55 AM EDT Chris Benham <cbenhamau at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>>
>> What do you think of  Adam Tarr's old idea of using  A-B-C--D-E-F
>> "grading" ballots with the idea of using them to infer ranking to elect
>> a Condorcet winner and if there isn't one then interpreting the A-B-C
>> grades as Approval?
> Why not just A-B as Approval?  Or why not A-B-C-D as Approval?  Or why not just A as Approval (I know that would result in Condorcet-Plurality).  What rhyme or reason is used to determine where the Approval cutoff is?
>
>> He liked Condorcet//Approval but also possible with these ballots is
>> Smith//Approval and  Margins-Sorted Approval and a few others.
>>
>> I don't see such a big problem with high-resolution score ballots as
>> long as it is made clear to the voters (and is true) that their
>> approximate ratings of the candidates will work just as well for them as
>> their exact ones.
> Please take a look at these templates for RCV legislation: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DGvs2F_YoKcbl2SXzCcfm3nEMkO0zCbR/view .
>
> Even though the actual legislation is not verbatim with these templates, the IRV template (first one) has actually been used for the content of the ballot question for an initiative for IRV.  The second template has BTR-IRV.
>
> Now consider the last three templates ("Straight-ahead Condorcet").  So this is specifically about what to put in subdivision (4) to replace:
>
> "(4) If no Condorcet winner exists in subdivision (3), then the candidate having the plurality of first preferences is elected."
>
> What exactly will the language be to replace that line of code?
>
> "(4) If no Condorcet winner exists in subdivision (3), then ..." what?
>
> Perhaps,
>
> "(4) If no Condorcet winner exists in subdivision (3), then the candidate receiving the most first and second preferences is elected."
>
> I might call that Condorcet-Bucklin.  Bucklin and Approval have something in common and that common property is that it's "counting marks" and not counting people.  This may be perceived by some legal analysts as violating One-person-one-vote, I dunno.
>
> Would that be a little more resistant to the burying strategy than Condorcet-Plurality?  How about comparing it to Condorcet-TTR, which is nearly Condorcet-IRV?
>
> "(4) If no Condorcet winner exists in subdivision (3), then the two candidates receiving the most first preferences shall runoff against each other and the candidate in that pair that is preferred over the other by the greater number of voters shall be elected."
>
> How would MO's "wv-Condorcet" be worded? (Since he is apparently not plonking me as was threatened.)
>
> It needs to be short and sweet.  ("Sweet" means that it ostensibly elects the candidate with the "greatest" voter support, however that voter support is defined.  But the definition of that "greatest" voter support needs to be simple and understandable and make sense to pedestrians.)
>
> --
>
> r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj at audioimagination.com
>
> "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
>
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