[EMAIL PROTECTED]">I do not subscribe to the belief that Approval lacks expressivity. I can expressUntil we find an even more democratic (yet simple) method of aggregating
individual utility into social utility, I suggest that we stick with
various ways of implementing Approval.
In particular, we can implement Approval in various ways that overcome the
"lack of expressivity" objection of its opponents, and without having to
apologize if Approval doesn't happen to pick the candidate with the
greatest mean or median rank or rate, or any other candidate that would
have won under some other inferior standard of democracy.
many preferences in Approval and will express the ones that I consider most
significant in the context of a given election. If I express preferences that are
of minor significance I am adding noise to my signal. Moreover, in Approval,
I have reason to believe my fellow voters will not be expressing a lot of
preferences that they regard as insignificant. Consequently, I feel assured that
there will be less noise from other voters to drown out my expression. So I
am very satisfied with the level of expression that Approval provides.
This doesn't mean I don't support efforts to fine-tune Approval. It just means
that even without additional improvements, Approval is already an excellent
method. I agree with Forrest that some refinements may make Approval more
appealing to those who seek more "expressivity" with ranked balloting.
Richard
[EMAIL PROTECTED]">
