12/19/02 - More Thoughts on Approval and IRV by Tom Ruen: Tom Ruen wrote:
Requoted: "I say for me there is no fundamental flaw of power of Approval or Ratings in terms of unequal power. The failure of Approval for me is that it demands more thought from voters. I support IRV over Approval because it better protects voters from themselves. Voter might "overvote" in Approval because they voted too quickly, but this can't happen in IRV or single vote methods." I made the above statement against claims that Approval is easier to vote and count. I think Approval is a harmless extension to plurality, except with regards to a need for a more complex voting strategy and I am afraid many people (by motivation, ability or time) are not up to this greater task. Ranked ballots of IRV have their own complexity that can confuse some voters, but the effects will be smaller since only one vote is counted at a time and errors in lower preference will usually not make a difference, unlike Approval. Usually I wouldn't compare IRV and Approval, since IRV requires more complex ballots, but given small hand-counted paper-ballot elections, I see no reason to prefer Approval checkbox ballots over IRV ranked ballots. If people wanted to use Approval ballots, I'd suggest "Normalize Approval" which splits a vote equally among all checked candidates - or "Normalized Ratings" for unequal splitting. This makes it a "Cumulative Voting" method (one split vote) and will discourage people from overvoting (Voting for more candidates than winners). Tom Ruen ---- For more information about this list (subscribe, unsubscribe, FAQ, etc), please see http://www.eskimo.com/~robla/em
