In another message today, I apologized that I misunderstood what Markus meant when he criticized Approval. Now I'll say what he did mean, and I'll answer that: >When this information isn't exact, [the voter] will probably approve >all potential winners or disapprove all potential winners so that >his vote has no influence on the election result. I now realize that Markus meant that the voter will often _accidentally_ vote for both or neither of the 2 frontrunners. He said "Is this really what you want?" Ok, Markus, what you're saying is that, because Approval doesn't let us vote all of our pairwise preferences, we sometimes won't vote our preference between the two frontrunners. And you're saying that therefore you'd rather have a method that lets us sincerely vote all of our pairwise preferences. What you're saying is that you want a method that complies with GSFC, or at least SFC. Those criteria are about letting us sincerely express all of our pairwise preferences, when that goal is attainable. As you know, I quite agree that it's good to comply with GSFC, or at least SFC. That's why I say that I'd prefer Condorcet to Approval. I've always made that clear. But IRV, while it lets us vote all of our pairwise preferences, will often not count them. And IRV doesn't let us sincerely vote all of our pairwise preferences. It will often force us to reverse preferences, even to the extent of dumping out favorite. Your criticism of Approval for not being Condorcet is quite unfair, and it's one that we often hear. You're asking too much of Approval. When you criticize it for not letting us vote all of our sincere pairwise preferences, you're criticizing it for not meeting SFC or GSFC. You're criticizing it for not being Condorcet. But compare Approval to the methods other than Condorcet: It does better than all of those by the defensive strategy criteria. For instance, Approval meets FBC & WDSC, and IRV fails both, with nothing to offer in return. Mike Ossipoff _____________________________________________________________________________________ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com
