<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>On Oct 18, 2011, at 10:13 PM, Dave Ketchum wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>Quoting Mike Ossipoff: '<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 19px; ">to me, our current public political elections don't require any strategy decisions, other than "vote for acceptable candidates and don't vote for the entirely unacceptable ones."'</span></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Tahoma" size="6"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 19px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Tahoma" size="6"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 19px;">In the discussions of Approval and ranking, below, Mke's thought applies to both. In the extreme, when this leaves no one to vote for, simply vote for none (or, if forced, do whatever forced to do for one candidate).</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Tahoma" size="6"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 19px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Tahoma" size="6"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 19px;">In Approval we have a count of how many considered each candidate acceptable; with ranking we have counts in an x*x matrix as to how many preferred each candidate over each other candidate.</span></font></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div>Some write later as if not understanding what I have written, so I will try emphasizing:</div><div><br></div><div>Being acceptable for electing by me means approvable via Approving or ranking, and not acceptable means I should not approve via either method, for I will not want to be part of getting lemons elected either way.</div><div><br></div><div>Thus the minimum of what can be done with ranking is the same as the ability of Approval, and no less, while ranking has additional abilities normally used.</div><div><br></div><div>More can be and normally is done with the abilities ranking offers, but this is not the lack some seem to see - the x*x matrix, used as part of counting in most ranking methods, is an informative summary as to ranking details.</div><div><br></div><div>Dave Ketchum<br><blockquote type="cite"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Tahoma" size="6"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 19px;"><br></span></font></div><div><div>On Oct 18, 2011, at 4:28 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote0 </div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div>matt welland wrote:<br><blockquote type="cite">On Mon, 2011-10-17 at 20:42 +0200, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">matt welland wrote:<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">Again, I think it is very, very important to note that the ranked<br></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">systems actually lose or hide information relative to approval in both<br></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">these cases.<br></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">In what manner does a ranked method hide information? Neither ranked ballot methods nor strategic Approval can distinguish between "everybody's equally good" and "everybody's equally bad".<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">Note that in the first case the results and impact of a ranked system<br></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">are actually worse than the results of approval. The political pressure<br></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">to converge and appeal to a broad spectrum is greater under approval<br></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">than the ranked systems. The evaluation of a voting system only makes<br></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">sense in the context of all the other things going on in a society. The<br></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">pressure on politicians to actually meet the needs of the people is a<br></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">massively important factor and ranked systems appear to wash out some of<br></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">that force which is a very bad thing IMHO.<br></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">Again, why is that the case? In Approval, you're either in or you're out; but in ranked methods, the method can refine upon those two groups and find the better of the good (be that by broad or deep support relative to the others). If anything, this finer gradient should increase the impact, not decrease it, because the search will more often be pointed in the right direction.<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">A ranked system cannot give the feedback that all the candidates are<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">disliked (e.g. all candidates get less than 50% approval). It also<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">cannot feedback that all the candidates are essentially equivalent (all<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">have very high approval).</blockquote></div></blockquote><div><br></div>While it is agreed that counts in Approval show the above, it needs seeing that the x*x matrix can be read in the same way for ranking.</div><div><br></div><div><blockquote type="cite"><div>Neither does strategic Approval. In Approval, the best simple strategy (if I remember correctly) is to approve the perceived frontrunner you prefer, as well as every candidate who you like better. In a Stalin election, if people were perfectly rational, the left-wingers would approve Stalin if the other frontrunner was Hitler.<br><br>Well, perhaps people aren't perfectly rational. However, to the degree they are honest, Approval can get into a contending third-party problem. If you have a parallel universe where Nader is nearly as popular as Gore, liberals would have to seriously (and strategically) think about whether they should approve of Gore or not - if too many approve of Gore *and* Nader, Nader has no chance of winning; but if too many approve of only Nader, Bush might win.<br><br><blockquote type="cite">Ranked systems essentially normalize the vote. I think this is a serious<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">issue. A ranked system can give a false impression that there is a<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">"favorite" but the truth might be that none of the candidates are<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">acceptable. </blockquote></div></blockquote><div><br></div>See above.<blockquote type="cite"><div><br>Some ranked methods can give scores, not just rankings. As a simple example, the Borda count gives scores - the number of points each candidate gets - as a result of the way it works. The Borda count isn't very good, but it is possible to make other, better methods give scores as well; and if you do so, an "equally good/equally bad" situation will show as one where every candidate gets nearly the same score.<br><br>As for distinguishing "equally bad" from "equally good", there are two ways you could do so within ranked votes. You could do it implicitly, by assuming that the voters approve of the candidates they rank and disapprove of those they don't; or you can do it explicitly by adding a "against all" (re-open nominations, none of the below, etc) virtual candidate.</div></blockquote><div><br></div>Adding a virtual candidate is making trouble for voters UNLESS its good justifies its pain.<blockquote type="cite"><div><br><blockquote type="cite">Ironically by trying to capture nuances the ranked systems have lost an<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">interesting and valuable part of the voter feedback.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">A voting system should never give the impression that candidates that<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">are universally loathed are ok. If our candidates were Adol Hitler,<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Benito Mussolini, Mao Zedong and<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Leopold II of Belgium then approval would rightly illustrate that none<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">are good candidates. However a ranked system would merely indicate that<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">one of them is the "condorcet" winner giving no indication that none are<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">acceptable.</blockquote></div></blockquote><div><br></div>Again, x*x is useful and available and ranking has no more need for sick ranking than does Approval.<blockquote type="cite"><div><br>Here, an implicit solution would record heaps of blank votes, and an explicit one would show the virtual candidate to be the CW.<br><br><blockquote type="cite">I think any sane voting system *must* meet this requirement. The ability<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">for the electorate to unambiguously communicate that none of the<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">candidates are worthy of the post under contest. I don't know how to prove it but my hunch is that approval would be more<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">resistant to manipulation by the so-called "one percenter" elites than<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">ranked systems.</blockquote></div></blockquote><div><br></div>Apparently this theory was designed without adequate understanding of ranking.<blockquote type="cite"><div><br>James Green-Armytage's paper seems to show Approval as one of the rules more vulnerable to strategic voting (see <a href="http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~armytage/svn2010.pdf">http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~armytage/svn2010.pdf</a> ). Whether or not that would translate into one-percenter manipulation, however, I don't know. I suspect that most of the rules (e.g. various Condorcet methods, Approval, Majority Judgement) would be sufficiently resistant. Even top-two seems to do well enough to break Duverger's law.<br></div></blockquote></div></div></blockquote></div><br></body></html>