<div class="gmail_quote">Jameson Quinn wrote:<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><div class="gmail_quote"><div class="im"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
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<div class="gmail_quote"><div>Suggestions:</div><div>- When a candidate is elected and you need to discard ballots, you could specify a more detailed preference order:</div>
<div>1. Ballots which delegated to that candidate</div><div>2. Ballots which bullet voted that candidate and didn't delegate</div><div>3. Ballots which approved two candidates</div><div>4. Ballots which approved three candidates</div>
<div>5. Ballots which approved four candidates</div><div>6. And so on.</div><div>This eliminates ballots first which approve fewer candidates. You may still have to select randomly within these tiers, but it gives an incentive for people to approve more candidates, which helps the method work better. Right?</div>
</div></blockquote><div><br></div></div><div>Well, up to a point. The problem would be if people approved a "no-hope" candidate, just to puff up the number of approvals on their ballot. This is a form of "Woodall free riding", and it could lead to DH3-type pathologies in the worst case. I'd rather not go there.</div>
<div></div></div></blockquote></div></div><br><div>Good point. Although if there do happen to be any voters who bullet voted for that candidate but didn't delegate to him, then you should definitely eliminate those first (even before the delegated ones, I think). Once that candidate is elected, ballots which don't approve any other candidates are pretty useless, so you might as well get rid of them.</div>
<div><br></div><div>But after that, I can see why you would be reluctant to incentivize approving more candidates.</div><div><br></div></blockquote><div><br></div></div><div>Here's an idea. When you have elected a candidate, choose which of their ballots survive, not which are eliminated; and do so in proportion to the number of remaining hopeful candidates approved per ballot. This naturally eliminates bullet votes. </div>
</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>You're still choosing randomly, right? So the probability of surviving will be proportional to the number of remaining hopeful candidates left on that ballot.</div><div><br></div>
<div>I like it. (I'm still kind of wary of non-deterministic methods, though. Not for myself, actually, but for selling them to the public.)</div><div><br></div><div>- Andy</div></div>