As I mentioned in a reply, Approval would be better as the "base method" of Voter's Choice than Plurality would. I suggested Plurality because it's official in the U.S., and because it has no advocates here, meaning that it can't be said to favor anyone. But Approval is better, because if your designated method missed the sincere CW by voting too far down your preference ordering, then Approval minimizes the mistake, by voting for your more-liked alternatives too. The way Approval would be used is: You automatically give an Approval vote to the altenative chosen by your designated method, and to every alternative that you've ranked higher (or rated higher, if you didn't vote a ranking). Also, anyone who prefers to should be able to simply indicate that they're casting an Approval ballot that says where they want their Approval votes to go. In other words, Voter's Choice is optional. A voter can opt to not use it for the placement of his Approval votes. Likewise, if in a Public election, Voter's Choice were being used with Plurality as the base method, a voter would have the option of just casting an ordinary Plurality ballot and specifying exactly where his Plurality vote will go. That way, Voter's Choice is optional, and no one can have anything to complain about. Tom suggested Runoff Approval. Well, the rankings and Approval ballots (actual & inferred) give sufficient information to do a Runoff Approval count, without a 2nd balloting. So Tom could designate Runoff Approval. Likewise, there's sufficient information for an Approval-Seeded SP count. Though I consider ordinary Approval better for public elections, for a number of reasons, here Runoff Approval probably does a better job of picking a sincere CW, picking the best compromise you can get. What method does the very best job? Condorcet. No matter what method you prefer, it would be the best idea to designate a Condorcet version (PC, Cloneproof SSD, BeatpathWinner, etc.) as your designated method. Of course if everyone did, it would just be a Condorcet election. Voter's Choice is probably the best way to vote when a definite choice is needed, and people don't agree on the method. For instance, in the vote on which polling topic to use, a definite choice is needed. It has the advantage of demonstrating every method that someone designates. I haven't heard any alternatives, except for Don's suggestion of 5 compulsory ballots, repeated up to 5 times. In the subsequent actual poll, a definite choice isn't really being made, since no one's sending out for pizza or buying ice cream, and so what's of interest is to compare the methods' results, and what it's like to use the methods--those things are really essential for a mailing list that studies voting systems, and so demonstration polls are very valuable for such a list. Even though a definite choice isn't needed in the actual poll on pizza toppings or ice cream flavors, etc., I'll still do a Voter's Choice count, just out of curiosity. If people don't designate a method in that poll, I'll use their designations from the initial poll on pollng topic. But it would be better to designate a method in the actual poll too, to find out what would have been chosen had it been necessary to make a definite choice, without an agreed-upon voting system. Mike Ossipoff _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
