[EM] Approval & 1-Person-1-Vote, & other Approval reply-answers.

[Michael Ossipoff]

Sorry about the delay—We had a lot to do, & then my phone somehow
deleted Robert’s post, & so then I had to find it in the archives,
further delaying the time when I’d have time to do so.

…

I shouldn’t answer this post, because it’s so obvious, everyone must
already know what it is. The post isn’t worthy of a reply. I’ll reply
this time, but this is the last time.

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[quote]

[quote]

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>* To most everyone, OPOV is synonymous with the Plurality, Vote-For-1 (VF1), voting-system.*

>

>* …& yes I admit that, by that definition, Approval indeed violates OPOV.*

>

>* …& I admit that Condorcet violates it too.*

>

[/quote]

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Certainly FPTP and IRV and Condorcet count people differently, but
what they're doing is counting people, some group of people against
some other group of people and saying that, if every person's vote
counts equally, then the candidate that has more persons voting for
him/her wins the election.

[/quote]

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Nonsense.

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It isn’t about counting people. In general, it’s about counting each
person’s rating of [u]each[/u] particular candidate, or each person’s
vote on a particular pairwise-comparison.

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…&, in particular, Approval counts the abovementioned ratings, by each
person, of each candidate.

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One-person-one-vote…on each candidate’s merit, or on each pairwise-comparison.

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Note that that requires counting a [u]number[/u] of merit or
comparison votes for each voter.

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That entails more than a count of people. It requires counting each
person’s expression regarding each candidate or pair of candidates.

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A plain count of people has no use or meaning when there are many
candidates & it’s necessary to allow the counting of each person’s
comparison of *the various* candidates’ merit, acceptability or
preferability, via ratings or a ranking. …indication of comparison of
merit, acceptance or preference for candidates, or preferences among
pairs of them.

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[quote]

Approval voting is counting marks.  As if marks have equal rights.

[/quote]

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That statement is too silly for words.

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Each voter has equal right to express & have counted hir indication
regarding merit or acceptance of each candidate, or regarding
preference between each pair of candidates.

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Yes, those indications are in the form of marks  :-)

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Robert might not realize this, but his claim amounts to the common
popular misinterpretation of OPOV as requiring the Vote-For-1
(Plurality) voting-system.

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Its requirement of allowing only 1 vote per person, a plain count of
people, is, of course, what’s wrong with Plurality.  When there are
many candidates, free expression of choice among them requires
allowing & counting either each person’s rating of each candidate, or
each person’s preference among each pair of candidates.

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Not only does Robert confuse OPOV with the rules of Vote-For-1, but he
wants to selectively forget that his IRVist interpretation of OPOV
forbids Condorcet, because Condorcet gives each person a vote between
each pair, rather than just one vote or mark.

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So, wow, Robert. I can’t believe you said that.

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I must say, you really disappoint me. What am I talking to?

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I thought it was just a blustery, sloppy, bad-mannered curmudgeon, someone
sometimes irrational, sometimes mistaken, but nonetheless honest.…someone
who merely favors margins because it does-pretty in the vanishingly-rare
spontaneous circular-tie…someone who is oblivious to margins’ hopeless
strategic quagmire.

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…but no.  I had no idea what I was talking to.

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This time you’ve really outdone yourself.

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 I don’t mean that you’re intentionally consciously dishonest. It’s just
that you’re one of those people (they’re very common) who will uncritically
believe whatever assumption supports something else that they want to
believe.

It’s genuine mistakenness, but it’s [u]willful[/u] mistakenness (to use the
more polite word).

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Those careless & sloppy comments don’t deserve the time it takes to reply
to them.

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Suit yourself & believe what you want to.  …& the Founding-Fathers fought
for your right to express your beliefs. But I have a right to not display
it on my computer. I’m going to exercise that patriotic right, by blocking
your e-mail, as soon as this message has been sent.

…

[/b]

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When I don’t answer Robert’s subsequent arguments, it doesn’t mean
that he’s said something irrefutable—It’s just because I no longer
display his messages on my computer.

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Now, a few comments on other statements in the post:

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[quote]

Now, measuring Approval on an Approval ballot is, in a degenerate
case, essentially the same measure as measuring Approval on a Score
ballot, where the degree of Approval is limited to two levels.

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Now, what the Ordinal methods do are, instead of asking the electorate
about how much they Approve a candidate, they ask "Do you *prefer*
this candidate over this other candidate?"  We voters are partisans,
not judges.  We cannot be nor should be expected to be measuring (and
awarding) worth of a candidate.

[/quote]

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Facilitating the expression of, & counting, each person’s preference
between each possible pair of candidates is fine. …& humungously
computationally-demanding, with the consequent serious problems, but
perfectly alright in principle.

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Allowing expression of liking or not liking, or of acceptance or
rejection, of each candidate is another way of allowing the expression
of relative preference.   …& is a lot more computationally-feasible.

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As I said before, Approval is incomparably easier to define, describe,
explain, propose, enact, administer, & security-audit for error &
count-fraud.

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That’s much more important than collecting more detailed information,
or using an automatic-machine to insulate, isolate & protect voters
from  involvement in direct expression via a simple reliable minimal
handtool.

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Does it allow expression of every pairwise-preference? No, but, for
tremendously easier counting, it allows rating each candidate. Robert
wants to say that we don’t have a right to rate the candidates’ merit.
So Robert is the giver of rights?

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Rating each candidate is a more-computationally-feasible substitute
for counting every possible pairwise-preference… among all N(N-1)/2
possible pairs among N candidates.  ...380 pairwise votes to count per
person when there are 20 candidates. Try to handcount-audit that.

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Approval allows the expression of many pairwise-preferences…as many as
are feasible with the practical limitation to rating instead of
ranking.

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Depending on how many candidates there are, & how many one chooses to
express liking or acceptance of, Approval allows the expression of up
to half or most of one’s pairwise-preferences.  …the ones that are
most important to the voter.

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I get that Robert wants the method to accept our preference-orderings
& then output the CW, doing everything for us, insulating & isolating
& sheltering the voter from the natural choices otherwise to be made.
But that comes at too high a cost, as I’ve described in my previous
posts,& directly above in this post.

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Approval is a different kind of voting from Condorcet rankings. Direct
involvement with the situation with a simple low-cost durable reliable
handtool--expression of each voter’s Y/N rating of each candidate.
…innstead of having it done for us, we do it for ourselves, with the
resulting tremendous improvement in computational simplification &
feasibility.

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…& what’s so bad about maximizing the number of people who get what
they like, or are pleasantly-surprised by the outcome?

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Let’s not make a religion of an a**l-retentive compulsion for
legalistic automatic decisionmaking.

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Multicandidate elections require expression & counting of everyone’s
expression of merit or preference comparison among all the candidates.

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…by rating each one, or by ranking them.

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Minimal is enough, for all things, including the voting-system.

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What overall-is, is good. Reality is benevolent. We have a lot to be
grateful for, & should act like it.

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That’s relevant to forum-conduct too.

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Continuing with comments on the post:

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>* > On Sat, Mar 23, 2024 at 18:27 Michael Ossipoff <**email9648742 at gmail.com* <http://lists.electorama.com/listinfo.cgi/election-methods-electorama.com>*> wrote:*

>* > > Approval maximizes the number of people pleasantly-surprised, &/or the number who get something they like.*

>* > > *

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[quote]

If the stakes are high and you Approve both A and B (but you like A
better) and then you find out that the top-two Approval candidates are
A and B, but B wins, you might not be very happy that you Approved B.
Especially if it was close.

[/quote]

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You like it better than what else would have won. That’s why you approved both.

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We’ve been over that a number of times.

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Approve as you feel like, & thereby maximize the probability of
getting something you like, & maximize your expectation based on what
you know &/or feel.

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No, you don’t know what your objectively-optimal vote is. Neither do
the other voters, so don’t worry about it.

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…& don’t forget that Approval has the voter-median as its
Meyerson-Weber equilibrium, soon homing-in on the CW.

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[quote]

So Approval, like FPTP, loses information about how voters would vote
in different contingencies.  But the ranked ballot preserves that
information, but it doesn't ask, nor should we care, what degree of
preference a voter has for one candidate over another.

[/quote]

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Yes, rankings express more information, & Condorcet’s exhaustive
pairwise-count counts more information, at too high a cost.

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[quote]

It should not matter.  If I enthusiastically prefer Candidate A and
you prefer Candidate B only tepidly, your vote for B should count just
as much as my vote for A.  We all get it right when there is only A
and B in the race.  But when there is C in the race, the Ordinal
ballot doesn't force the voter to make tactical considerations like a
Cardinal ballot inherently requires.  (But bad tallying methods can
make voters regret their vote.)

[/quote]

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I’ve admitted that Condorcet does it all for you.   …at at too high a cost.

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[quote]

Condorcet violates One-person-one-vote *only* if there isn't a Condorcet winner.

[/quote]

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Condorcet violates your IRVist interpretation of OPOV, period.

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[quote]

  Then Arrow and Gibbard prevail and, no matter what method is used,
the election is spoiled.  There is a candidate that can be removed
which will result in changing who would be elected.  Can't be avoided
but we should do the best that we can do in that rare pathological
circumstance.

[/quote]

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Yes Condorcet fails Participation, Consistency & IIAC. Approval doesn’t.

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Condorcet inherently violates FBC, so rarely & unpredictably that the
FBC failure is strategically-irrelevant.  But Condorcet other than wv
Condorcet fails FBC as blatantly and problematically as does IRV.
…resulting in a strategic quagmire the same as that of IrV.

…

[quote]

My opinion is that when no Condorcet winner exists, the easiest sell
to the public (and legislature that might enact such law) is either
just the Plurality (of first-choice votes) winner or perhaps the
runoff winner between the top two first-choice vote getters.

[/quote]

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:-D

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…if you want un-deterred burial by whatever faction believes its
candidate to have a plurality, but not be CW.

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[quote]

To disincentivize sophisticated strategic voting, probably Schulze or
Ranked Pairs is best.  I prefer margins over winning-votes.

[/quote]

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I remind Robert that Schilze explicitly uses winning-votes.  …& that
winning-votes, & not margins, deters offensive-strategy in RP &
Beatpath.

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Without that deterrence, you have a strategic need to toprank all the
acceptable candidates to try to protect them from burial.  But,
because you can’t be sure that sufficiently-many other voters will
share your strategy, you need to try to further enhance that
protection by ranking the acceptable candidates in order of
winnability instead of preference or merit.

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But that “winnability” is difficult to judge or even define, Somehow
you have to hope that everyone who prefers similarly to you will rank
the acceptable candidates as you do.   Sound familiar?  It’s like how
we have to hope that all who prefer as we do will combine together on
the same candidate in 1-Vote Plurality. Big complication, to attain no
improvement over Plurality.

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leaving you with Plurality’s & IRV’s strategic quagmire that I mentioned above.

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I’m not saying that your versions of Condorcet is worse (or better) than IRV.

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But, with them, you get nothing in return for the big problems
resulting from the complication & computation-intensiveness of the
exhaustive pairwise-count of rank-balloting.

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Condorcet(margins),& CW,Topcount both do an excellent job of retaining
IRV’s strategic quagmire.

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Who recommended CW,Topcount to the Vermont legislature?
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