On Sat, 13 Sep 2003, [iso-8859-1] Kevin Venzke wrote: > What your Max Power method does in the three-candidate, weak centrist > scenario is a perfect example of this: The low-utility centrist will be embraced > as soon as a major faction "learns" they can't win. >
Thanks for this comment. I'm going to work on modifying the Max Power collapsing rule to take into account CR differences in order to address this weakness. For those just tuning in, Max Power is an example of an automatic approval cutoff method that continually adjusts the approval cutoff based on previous results, similar to Repeated Approval Balloting except that required collapses at each step ensure that the method cannot cycle forever. Note that Generalized Bucklin also has required collapses at each step. In Generalized Bucklin the collapses are always the top two remaining levels, and the new cutoff is always between the new top two levels. In Max Power neither the collapses nor the cutoffs are determined so rigidly: instead the Max Power rules try to approximate what the voter would do if he were there to choose which pair of adjacent categories to collapse on his ballot and where to place the new approval cutoff. Up 'til now it hasn't made any difference in Max Approval if the ballots were CR ballots or ordinal ballots allowing equal rankings. But as Kevin points out, unless we use CR values somewhere in the method, we cannot expect to weed out low utility CW's. Forest ---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
