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<pre><br>Abd:<br><br>I'm starting this reply today, though I probably won't have enough computer-time<br>today to complete this reply.<br><br>First, two definitions that you asked about:<br><br>AOC:<br><br>AOC is Optional Conditional Approval. You can make any of your approvals conditional<br>by mutuality. Then, that approval is counted only if it is reciprocated. The best<br>way to describe how it actually works is by the pseudocode for the proposed process<br>for optional conditionality by mutuality. That pseudocode can be found in my first<br>posting that introduced (and mentioned in the subject-line) "MTA-Optional-Conditional (MTAOC)"<br>That posting contains the pseudocode for determining whether a conditional MTA middle-rating will<br>be counted. AOC uses that same algorithm to determine whether to count a conditional approval.<br>Some days later I posted a message with a subject line indicating a fix for a typo, an<br>inadvertently-omitted line that needed to be added to the pseudocode. Then later I posted another message in which I<br>suggested that all of your top-rated (in MTA) candidates should be regarded as "coalition-suitable"<br>(instead of asking the voter to mark some top-rated candidates as "coaliton-suitable") for you. <br>In AOC, unconditional approval is, for that purpose, treated as top-rating.<br><br>I admit that that is a mess--when my optional-conditionality-by-mutuality algorithm definition<br>is in three widely-separated postings. At least I should re-post the corrected pseudocode in<br>one posting. Should have already done that before now. Will within a few days.<br><br>u/a election:<br><br>u/a stands for unacceptable/acceptable. A u/a election is one in which there is one or more completely unacceptable<br>candidates who could win.<br><br>In such an election, avoiding the election of an unacceptable is all-important. In a u/a election by ABucklin,<br>it's definitely your best strategy to top-rank all the acceptables, and not rank any unacceptables. I consider our<br>public political elections to be u/a. The Republocrats are the among the unacceptables, though there are probably<br>others too. That's just my opinion as a voter, judging by standards such as dishonesty, corruption, bought-ness, etc. <br><br>The Republocrats are a set, effectively a party, consisting of two nearly identical subsets called <br>Democrats and Republicans. Gore Vidal said that we don't have a two-party system--We have one party with two right wings.<br><br>End of definitions of AOC and u/a election.<br><br>At 04:04 PM 3/5/2012, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote:<br><br>You said that achievability, getting from here to there, is more important than optimality, for <br>a voting system proposal. Yes, and that's why strongly suggest that Approval should be the first<br>proposal. In later proposals, vote-management options could be added. They include:<br><br>AOC, MTAOC, MCAOC, AOCBucklin (Bucklin with the MTAOC kind of optional conditionality), <br>the delegation option of SODA, and fractional voting (RV). All of these options could be offered<br>for the same Approval election. Of course they needn't all be offered in the same enhancement<br>proposal. I'd start with AOC. But, first, Approval should be proposed.<br><br>Approval, though entirely adequate as a destination method, is also the best route to ABucklin or<br>SODA or maybe RV.<br><br>Or, alternatively, RV could be the first proposal:<br><br>Of course it goes without saying that Approval voting is automatically a way of voting in RV (you <br>top-rate your approved candidates and bottom-rate everyone else). Then, all of the abovementioned<br>Approval vote-management options could be proposed too.<br><br>Approval, then, is naturally, easily, expandable to AOC, AOCBucklin, ABucklin, RV, SODA, etc.,<br>as vote-management options in the Approval election.<br><br>You spoke of the "one-person-one-vote" (opov) objection to Approval. <br><br>Yes, that objection amounts to a complete misunderstand of what opov was originally intended to mean.<br><br>Opov meant that each person should have the same voting power. One person shouldn't be able to outvote<br>two or three people. Approval doesn't violate opov.<br><br>If someone wants more elaboration about that, point out to them that, in an Approval election, my ballot<br>can cancel your ballot, no matter how many candidates you vote for--I could do that by voting for all<br>the candidates you don't vote for, and not for any that you do vote for.<br><br>For example, suppose that you vote for all of the candidates except for one. I can cancel your ballot<br>by voting only for the one candidate that you didn't vote for.<br><br>So, obviously, you don't have more voting power by voting for more candidates. In a 10-candidate election,<br>in the above example, you've voted for 9 times as many candidates I've voted for, but I've canceled you<br>out. Voting for more candidates didn't give you more voting power. Any ballot can be cancelled out by<br>an oppositely-voted ballot.<br><br>Approval is a point system. Like the 0-10 point system, or the 0-100 point system, Approval is a point<br>system. Approval is the 0-1 point system.<br><br>Approval asks you to rate each candidate as acceptable or unacceptable. Your vote on a candidate's<br>acceptability is no stronger than anyone else's.<br><br>Approval elects the candidate who is acceptable to the most voters.<br><br>I've probably mentioned this in my other reply, but all of the Approval strategies that we've discussed at EM<br>amount to voting for all the candidates who are better than your expectation for the election. In other words,<br>vote for a candidate only if you'd rather appoint hir to office instead of holding the election.<br><br>So, Approval maximizes the number of voters for whom the winner is better than their expectation was. The candidate<br>who was better than what they expected. The candidate who maximizes the number of pleasantly-surprised voters.<br><br><br><br>>(First, when I speak of ABucklin as an Approval option, that's only <br>>for brevity and simplicity,<br>>because, starting from Approval, I'd offer AOC as an option or an <br>>alternative method, before ABucklin.<br>>AOCBucklin, for me, would be next, after AOC. Still, as Abd <br>>suggested, ABucklin is the natural<br>>1-balloting implementation of a reasonable and obvious collective <br>>deliberating process, and, thereby,<br>>might be the first alternative voting system that people would <br>>accept--Then AOCBucklin could be reserved<br>>for a later enhancement.)<br> <br>Unfortunately, I don't know what "AOC" is, and I searched the subject <br>headers here. It was used in many posts, none of which explained what <br>the method was, some contained long sentences with unexplained <br>alphabet soup..... Sigh.<br> <br>You continued:<br><br>Bucklin is a simululation of a *common* collective <br>deliberating process, not just a reasonable one. Bucklin/runoff is a <br>more sophisticated simulation that splits up the compromising process <br>into two ballots. <br><br>[endquote]<br><br>...But the runoff would complicate the proposal. You could propose it later, though.<br>But when you complicate or elaborate a method, FBC-failure tends to sneak in.<br><br>In your posting you suggest a runoff between some two members of {CW, Bucklin-winner, RV-winner}.<br><br>That adds complication, and so, as you probably know, it shouldn't be proposed other than as a<br>later enhancement. And deciding which two members of that 3-element set should go into the runoff adds another complication.<br><br>Adding that runoff would mean making a new method, instead of just having Approval with vote-management options. <br>I'm not saying that that rules it out, but an enhancement other than an option would, of course, require more<br>justification and more convincing.<br><br>Besides, anything using the CW almost surely violates FBC.<br><br>To be continued...<br><br>Mike Ossipoff<br><br><br><br><br></pre> </div></body>
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