[EM] Approval vs Condorcet. Voting in Approval.

[Michael Ossipoff]

On Sun, May 26, 2024 at 10:20 Chris Benham <cbenhamau at yahoo.com.au> wrote:

> In a way Approval isn't a voting method, it's more like a voting
> "anti-method".


???


>
> Voting methods have some algorithm.


Approval has an algorithm: “Sum the approvals”.

Is it much simpler, & more easily & securely computed algorithm?
Absolutely!!


  They try to reduce the need for
> strategy, hopefully make some attempt to resist strategy, and (normally
> and hopefully)  give the voter the option of expressing their full
> strict ranking of the candidates.


You’re referring to the rank-methods. Yes, as I said, their goal is to
allow you to merely state your sincere preference-ordering, & then do it
all for you, sheltering & isolating you from the choice that you’d have to
make without that complicated, computer-dependent & humungously
computation-intensive automatic-machine that is a rank-method.

I’ve agreed that wv Condorcet would be desirable for public political
elections were it not for the problems that I’ve specified.

>
>
> Approval has no algorithm.


See above.

It invites "strategy" and more-or-less relies
> on it to give a reasonable result.


No, some ways of choosing whom to approve don’t involve strategy, & are
completely sincere. I discussed them in my long posts about how to vote in
Approval.

Approve everyone  that you like.

Approve all the acceptable candidates & none of the unacceptable ones.

That latter way of approving is how I’d approve in a public political
Approval election. No strategy. Just sincere expression regarding
acceptability.

But yes,  some of the other ways of approving are strategic. Admittedly,
Approval doesn’t do it all for you.

Rather than give the voter a way of
> expressing their full sincere rankings, it confines the voter to
> choosing a set of candidates whose members they wish to uniformly and
> indiscriminately help versus the non-members.


…an alternative wording of Approval’s best descriptive definition:

“Approval let’s each voter rate each candidate as approved or not approved.”

>
>
> It ensures "honest voting" by severely curtailing voter expression.


Approval doesn’t curtail any currently-available voter-expression. It
improves voter-expression to allow & count preference & merit differences
among a set of more than 2 candidates.

Does it provide for expression of all of your pairwise preferences? No. It
isn’t a rank-method. It doesn’t take all of your preferences, but it lets
you choose which ones are the more important ones.

The added expressivity of rank-methods comes at too high a price (…here. I
can’t speak for Australia or Norway.)



>
> It's based on the assumption that voters only care about the effect of
> their votes on who wins…


…as can be said just as much for any method. But with any method, there’s
voting intended for expression or pure principle.

and enjoy compromise-compression strategising.


I don’t know what compromise-compression is. Enjoy? Approval voting is
easy, as I’ve described. It can but needn’t be strategic.


> Obviously a huge improvement on the FPP "anti-method" but nonetheless
> understandably difficult for some people to get enthusiastic about.


…especially people who have been led to expect rankings. That’s why it’s
good that RP(wv) & MinMax(wv) are available as alternative proposals for
people who insist on rankings.

>
>
> There would still be some incentive for dishonest polls, trying to scare
> voters into approving unneeded Compromise candidates to guard against
> some Greater Evil.  But it is a great benefit that a rational voter can
> at least never be conned into not approving their sincere favourite
> (along with any other candidates they prefer to their Compromise
> candidate).


Yes—a big improvement l.

>
>
> So "over the course of a few elections"  Approval would strongly tend to
> "zero in" on the Condorcet winner.  That is great, but the Condorcet
> supporter might well ask: "Why should we have to wait that long?".


Of course. For improvement, the sooner the better.

But, for one thing, enacted sooner, Approval could bring better results
before Condorcet does…because Condorcet can’t do much till it’s enacted.
Two U.S. cities have enacted Approval. Zero have enacted Condorcet.

For another thing, with count-fraud, it might not do any good to have
theoretically better method.

It seems to me that, in every one of our EM polls, Approval has chosen the
CW. …without any waiting.

Better to trust the voters to use Approval well, than to trust every
count-participant to not accept a few bucks from someone in return for
doing count-fraud.



>
> Approval is a huge bang-for-buck contender, mainly by being almost no
> "buck".


Don’t underestimate the bang. It would bring a huge difference.

>
>
> Chris B.
>
>
> On 26/05/2024 7:20 pm, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
> > On 2024-05-16 08:04, Michael Ossipoff wrote:
> >
> >> I’m glad you brought up the desire for the method to do it all for us
> >> (as Condorcet does)…taking our sincere rankings as input, &
> >> outputting the legalistic right choice. …because I’ve been meaning to
> >> address that matter.
> >>
> >> …& that’s not even counting the much less expensive implementation
> >> (could be zero cost, without even needing new count-software), easier
> >> less expensive administration, & easier simpler explanation with
> >> consequent easier enactment.
> >>
> >> Approval isn’t as difficult to vote as it opponents claim. There are
> >> many ways to choose what or whom to approve. That variety is a good
> >> thing, because you can choose how you like.
> >>
> >> Condorcet is legalistic, but we don’t have to be legalistic! Approval
> >> guarantees election of the candidate who maximizes the number of
> >> voters for whom the outcome is in their preferred of the two
> >> merit-subsets, however the voter designates them.
> >>
> >> e.g. If people approve what they like, Approval maximizes the number
> >> of people who like the outcome.
> >>
> >> If people approve what’s acceptable, then Approval maximizes the
> >> number of people for whom the outcome is acceptable.
> >>
> >> If people approve above expectation, then Approval maximizes the
> >> number of people for whom the outcome is above expectation…maximizes
> >> the number of people pleasantly surprised.
> >>
> >> You don’t know the objectively-optimal vote? Neither does anyone
> >> else, so don’t worry about it!
> >
> > This makes it very hard to reason about or define any relative
> > properties about Approval, though, because it kicks the can down the
> > road to the voter instead.
> >
> > This is perhaps a bit exaggerated, but to show a point: does Approval
> > really pass clone independence? Suppose more candidates of a wing show
> > up, which embolden people to be more discerning than just approving
> > what's acceptable. Then the winner changes.
> >
> > Is "Approval"[1] *really* FBC, or monotone? If it converges to the
> > Condorcet winner, then nope, because you can't have FBC and Condorcet.
> > If it converges to the essential set, then nope, because the essential
> > set is nonmonotone.
> >
> > By saying "don't sweat it, people will do what they will do, there's
> > no objective meaning to the ballot except what the voters like", voter
> > behavior becomes so much more intermixed with the method. And then,
> > for criteria to compare apples to apples, they should take this
> > intermixing into account. Not being legalistic shouldn't let Approval
> > off the hook.
> >
> > But how?
> >
> > What I want is to have each method equally on the hook for what its
> > behavior implies. To paraphrase a reply I made to rb-j: if the winner
> > of an election can change when non-winners drop out, we don't really
> > care if the method passes IIA as such. It's a nice thing to have in a
> > box-ticking way, but that's it.
> >
> > If a method wants to open up the can of worms to say "nope, this
> > method isn't meant to be used in isolation, it's supposed to be used
> > with /whatever/ internal way of going from utilities to the types of
> > expression the ballot accepts", then okay, let's take it at face
> > value. Let's ask the questions that matter. Can this make someone lose
> > if some of the honest voters like the candidate more? Can it make a
> > non-winner change who the winner is?
> >
> > For ranking, this is easy, courtesy of the "legalism". For Approval,
> > not so much.
> >
> > -km
> >
> > [1] or rather, the method induced by iterating Approval or by
> > combining Approval with one or more thresholding strategies implicitly
> > chosen by a voter.
> > ----
> > Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list
> > info
>
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