At 12:02 PM 4/25/2007, Tim Hull wrote: >On this topic, does anyone know of a modified, >kind-of-Condorcet-but-not-quite method which preserves >later-no-harm? This may be interesting as a starting point...
I don't see that Approval has been considered. If you are considering retaining Plurality for single-winner, you should at least stop tossing overvotes! This only violates Later-no-harm under questionable analysis. If, as a voter, you will be "harmed" if your second preference beats your first by a vote, then don't vote for the second preference! Under standard Approval strategy, you would not cast such a vote.... But my guess is that student elections are not preceded by wide understanding of who are the front-runners. In any case, Approval does not harm as an election method in place of Plurality. It uses the same ballot, it is actually more simple to count than plurality -- Just Count All the Votes! and nobody is forced to expose themselves to the alleged harm of seeing your second preference win. If everyone bullet-votes, Approval reduces to Plurality. But the same is true of IRV, Range, etc.... IRV more clearly satisfies Later-No-Harm, which many election experts consider a relatively unimportant criterion. Like the Majority Criterion, we can see that an election method which satisfies it can produce less-than-optimal results. Sometimes much less, blatantly undesirable. Technically, as well, Later-no-harm is about a theoretically possibility that depends on a tie before the voter votes, whereas the failures of IRV, for example, require no such rare scenario. ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
