At 03:20 AM 3/17/2007, Dave Ketchum wrote: >Offer me true Approval - the one that differs from Plurality only in >permitting over votes - and we have something understandable and, >occasionally, useful.
This is true Approval. What else would it be? (Ballot design may vary, but the essence is that you may vote for one or more candidates, and the candidate with the most votes wins. >Offer me Range and we are, presumably into something else: > I need to understand its abilities and method of invocation, > to decide if I wish to use such. Sure. There are variables, and Range advocates are not unanimous about the best method of implementation. The basic idea is simple: voters may assign a score or rating in a range of allowable scores. It is generally assumed that this range is linear and integral, i.e., the scores are of the form of N, N+1, N+2, ..., R-1, where the method is Range R, and N is often assumed to be zero. Thus Approval is Range 2. There are two methods of determining the overall score for candidates: summation and averaging. If everyone assigns a score to every candidate, summation and averaging provide the same relative results. However, because Range can be implemented on standard voting equipment, as if each candidate were a race (i.e., a multiple choice list), it is possible to amalgamate the scores by averaging. As has been noted, Approval Voting is effectively used for choosing between multiple conflicting ballot initiatives, where, should both initiatives pass, the one with the most Yes votes wins. This would be summation Range 2. Average Range 2 would compare the Yes/No ratios for the two "candidates." Personally, I find that using Average Range, while it has some attractive features, introduces far too much complication, for it becomes necessary then to introduce what CRV calls a "quorum rule," limiting the conditions under which a dark horse candidate, one rated by relatively few, can win. So my own basic Range proposals would be summation Range; the result is that blank votes are counted effectively as if they were minimum rating. There is another possibility, to be sure: If the Range is -1, 0, +1, which has been suggested by a number of writers, including myself, then blank votes would be counted as an intermediate vote.... My own preference is to go for simple Approval first, because implementation is extremely simple -- it is actually easier to count, in some ways, than standard Plurality, and to then work on where to go from there. Approval resolves the first-order spoiler effect. Certainly Approval does not allow great flexibility of expression, it is merely a drastic improvement over standard Plurality. (It is, in fact, what standard Plurality would be if not for the special no-overvoting rules that seem to be ubiquitous, though only where paper or equivalent ballots are used. No-overvoting is never enforced when voice vote is involved, nor with show of hands, only where there is a roll call or secret ballot.) > My desires often remain with Plurality. Is there a way to > express that thought under Range? Do I have the same power that I > would have under Plurality or Approval? Yes, you have the same power. Just vote max rating for one candidate. If it is summation Range, you are done. If it is average Range, then you may have to rate all candidates or lose voting power. Range advocates generally do seem to want to provide a means that voters can indicate something like "Treat my blanks as zero rating," or they will add an Abstain option. If you don't check the Abstain option, you have voted a zero rating. I think that this could be an example of the Best is the enemy of the Good. While it seems reasonable to allow voters to explicitly abstain, it complicates the ballot and it is speculative what social benefit is obtained. Once we have Approval, we may then have Range with N > 2. And we can then consider what to do with abstentions. The tradition, based on the procedure with ballot initiatives, is that abstentions are equivalent to No, for the purpose of comparing two initiatives. (If you *really* want to abstain in a race, you simply don't vote for anyone, you then will not affect the outcome at all.) >Point is that you complicate life for me, i.m.voter. You claim to >offer value for the cost - something to debate another day. Approval doesn't complicate things for you at all, and a decent Range ballot wouldn't either. A great deal depends on ballot design and instructions. Actually voting Range in a manner equivalent to Plurality is trivial, as I mentioned: just max rate your favorite and zero everyone else. Range voters should understand that any vote other than max or min is a "weak" vote. That is, it has an intermediate effect. One way of looking at Range N is that you have N-1 votes to cast. Cast as many as you like, up to N-1, for as many candidates as you like. Obviously, if you cast your votes equally for all candidates, it is as if you stayed home, in one way. Or it could mean that you truly are equally satisfied with all. If you don't cast all your votes, you are weakening your vote. It's up to you if you want to do this. Voting strategy can get complicated, but only a way that is also true for Plurality: you may wish to consider not only your own "favorite," but also how other voters are likely to vote. If your Favorite is not likely to win, you will waste your vote by only voting max for your favorite and min for everyone else. You may quite reasonably vote Range Approval style, that is, select an approved set and vote max for all of them and min for everyone else. More likely, I think, voters will vote min for anyone you consider a truly bad choice for the office. And they will certainly vote max for their favorite, and maybe, under some conditions, for another -- typically the favorite among the top two -- and then some intermediate votes for candidates that the voter wishes to express some support for. It's not completely clear how voters will choose to vote. However, what is clear is that the only way that Range makes it more complicated is if a voter chooses to use intermediate ratings. Voter education should include the understanding that it is not at all obligatory to use these. Plurality works well, we should understand, when there are only two choices. And two-party systems effectively make this the case for most voters. The problem is what happens with other candidates, and the spoiler effect. Approval and Range deal with this, allowing candidates and parties to rise in parity without spoiling elections. (An election is "spoiled" under Plurality when the winner would have lost in a pairwise contest, but wins because the vote was split among opponents, and Plurality provides no way to determine if this is the case, because overvotes or ranked votes are not permitted. Range technically can also allow a pairwise winner to lose, but only where there is another candidate with *broader* support. And that is a whole topic of its own, the logic behind Range not satisfying the Majority Criterion as usually understood.) ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
