Chris Benham chrisbenham-at-bigpond.com |EMlist| wrote:
Russ,
I agree with  Kevin V.'s last post in this thread.  You wrote:

The same considerations apply to the "top-two Approval pairwise runoff" method I suggested a few days ago. If the "turkey raisers" or cloners succeed, they have simply forced an effective reversion to basic Approval.


In terms of strategy and possible results, no, because in "basic Approval" no-one has any incentive to vote for a "turkey". Assuming the "turkey raisers" would prefer to elect a turkey rather than one of the candidates from the rival faction of turkey-raisers, then they have two levels of success: (1) to prevent the election of a candidate from there rival faction of turkey-raisers, and (2) to elect one of their own candidates. It is possible that the net effect of the turkey-raising is that the final runoff will be between two turkeys, a complete
fiasco.
Also it is unfair that parties with the resources to run two candidates should have an (extra) advantage (in terms of the voting system maths) over parties who can only afford to run one.

I agree. The same consideration applies to two-round runoff, of course, which is in widespread use.

And if we are going to use ranked ballots with an Approval cutoff, why not something reasonable to good like Smith//Approval, DMC or AM?

Yes, I think those first two are solid (but I forgot what AM stands for). I think I actually lean toward Smith/Approval. Its one slight disadvantage is the requirement to explicitly define and determine the Smith set, which DMC avoids. Not that that's difficult to do, of course.

--Russ
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