pauldubourt said: > I agree with Donald that single-seat cumulative > voting is preferable to approval voting, because it seems as if some > voters have more influence over the election than other voters in the > approval voting system.
Go to the election methods mailing list and you'll find there's been some heated debate over that topic. I'm posting this to that list because I think it's relevant to recent discussions. It's often said that people in Approval Voting, voting for half of the main contenders have more influence than those voting for a few of the main contenders, or almost all of the main contenders. Many people, myself included, would observe that people vote in a "less influential" way because supporting more candidates than the optimal amount (or fewer than optimal) is the best way to protect their interests. If a "less influential" strategy does a better job of protecting one's interests, perhaps that strategy is actually more influential than originally suspected. A more pragmatic observation is this: Suppose a single-seat election has only 3 candidates with strong support (a plausible situation). Voting for either 1 or 2 candidates is equivalent to ranking 2 of them equal to one another, and ranking the 3rd either above or below them. In both strategies you provide the same amount of information. So, in many elections Approval will effectively collect and use the same amount of information from each voter. Alex Small ---- For more information about this list (subscribe, unsubscribe, FAQ, etc), please see http://www.eskimo.com/~robla/em
