Good point! Consider the rules of Gradual Approval amended to say that by the n_th round the number of strips submitted should be at least n.
By the way, in addition to committee and proxy applications, another potential application of Gradual Approval and other non-simple methods is as an underlying method for Lorrie Cranor's DSV (Declared Strategy Voting). I read Lorrie's dissertation recently. It has a lot of good stuff in it. The basic idea of DSV applies to all voting methods for which strategy is an important consideration. After a discussion of the general possibilities Lorrie specializes to the case of (lone mark) Plurality as the underlying method in her case studies, and assumes that all voters would want to use a decision theoretic strategy that maximized their expected utilities. She comes to a kind of mixed conclusion. When DSV is based on Plurality it shares some of the problems of IRV: it is non-monotone, tends to eliminate a CW that has poor first place showing, etc.. It seems that the main advantage over IRV is that it is harder to manipulate than IRV. The college campus survey that she conducted indicated that most folk (in that population) wouldn't trust that application of DSV: they would rather cast their own Plurality ballots in a regular Plurality election. This somewhat disappointing result seems to have led Lorrie to put DSV on the back burner; now she devotes her time to her job and family. On the positive side, as Lorrie points out, DSV has been used by private firms for certain kinds of decisions. She also mentions the need for further study of DSV with other underlying methods and with other types of strategies, especially the "sophisticated" strategies of game theory that go beyond the simple strategies of decision theory used in her thesis. It seems to me that Gradual Approval is an ideal candidate for an underlying method. At each round each voter has to make a simple decision that should be easily amenable to decision theory. The method cannot cycle because the game is over in n moves if there are n candidates. Forest On Mon, 3 Dec 2001, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote: > > > In Gradual Approval, it seems to me that the voter should have the > option to simultaneously vote more than one strip. For instance, > the voter knows immediately that s/he wants to vote for hir favorite, > and not for hir last choice. > > The Nader voter, in the Nader,Gore,Bush election, has it in hir best > interest to turn in a "no vote for Bush" strip immediately, with hir > "vote for Nader" strip. In that way, s/he can possibly convince other > Nader preferrers that Bush won't win, encouraging them to not vote for > Gore in a subsequent round. > > Mike Ossipoff > > > > _________________________________________________________________ > Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp > >
