Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: >If a method allows voters to express a "strict preference," and >Approval does, but it also allows voters to do something else, does >this mean that voters who *have* expressed a strict preference, in >the manner that the election method permits, are to be considered as >not having expressed this preference merely because the method did >not allow them to take the alternate path without expressing a strict >preference? > Typically completely stupid question.
>How can a voter express a "strict preference" in Approval. > >Is there a means to do it? > >That voters may do something else, which is express a "group >preference" *is irrelevant*. Or is it relevant? How? > Suppose we have a lot of hampers of food to give away. We have larger ones that contain more than one type of food, and smaller ones that contain only one type. We then invite recipients to each choose one only hamper to take home. So yes, some of these people could have expressed a "strict preference" for a certain type of food and a few might have, but we never asked them to and those that did paid the price of getting less food. >What in the >criterion covers this contingency? > For especially obtuse morons, it comes under the heading of "criteria that apply to ranked ballot methods". Approval isn't a ranked ballot method, so we ask "if the voters each have a candidate they mean to rank alone in first place on a ranked ballot, can we (reasonably, reliably, consistently) infer from the ballots they submit who those candidates are?" The answer for FPP is obviously "Yes". For this purpose an FPP ballot can properly be considered to be simply a ranked ballot that doesn't allow equal-ranking at the top. The fact that the "lower preferences" are ignored or invisible or don't exist is irrelevant. >I'm not sure that Benham said exactly what he intended to say.. > I did. I'm normally careful to do that. >We assume that voters intend to do what they did. > For criteria that apply to ranked ballots, we assume that the voters mean to submit a ranked ballot. Venzke and Woodall interpret Approval ballots as ranked ballots with all the ranked candidates approved and the numbers indicating the order in which they are ranked obscured. I think Abd's real-world propaganda concerns are misplaced. In situations where FPP elects a majority winner, supporters of that candidate will usually have enough pre-poll information to know to use the "exclusively approve your favourite" strategy. In fact usually it will be known in advance who the two front-runners are, and if the voters in general adopt the sensible "approve the front-runner I prefer to the other plus all the candidates I prefer to both of them" strategy then of course in practice Approval will always elect a majority favourite. Approval is in much bigger trouble in comparison to IRV, which *does* have it all over Approval in terms of majority-related guarantees (except perhaps for Minimal Defense). Promoting Approval versus IRV requires continually hammering Favourite Betrayal Criterion, ultimate simplicity and huge "bang for buck", and Minimal Defense. Chris Benham > > ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
