Paul Kislanko wrote:
I agree with almost all of what Jonathan says except that "as a voter" (and
that's my main perspective) I _CAN_ see a need for equal rankings in a
method that requests my ordinal list of alternatives.
A>B=C=D=...>V>W=...X=Y=Z
fairly precisely expresses what I was thinking when I voted. "Of the
lower-alphabet alternatives I prefer A, but if A doesn't win I prefer any of
the other top-alphabet alternatives to all of the lower-alphabet
alternatives, of which I prefer V to any of the others that I find equally
distastefull."
One can (and folks on this list often do) describe the > between one set of
=s and another as an "approval cutoff", but that is unnecessay if you have
fully ranked ballots with equal ranks allowed. From such collection
mechanisms one can count ballots by pretty much any method, which is why "as
a voter" I prefer a vote-COLLECTION method that allows ranked ballots with
equal ranks and truncation allowed, regardless of how votes are COUNTED.
That's not really what an approval cutoff is. An approval cutoff is used
by some methods to denote "the candidates above are those I can accept;
those below, I really don't like". At least that's what I understand,
though some methods may reward strategic placement of the cutoff as well.
In any case, these methods use that additional information to do things
an ordinary ranked method couldn't. For instance, MDDA satisfies FBC and
SFC. No purely ranked method that I know of does this.
(truncation actually is like A>B>C=D=...=M>(any not listed) which gives me
(the voter) the option of not having to think about which of the
alternatives I disapprove of I have to rank least-least desirable.)
PS. This is what I don't like about approval. In my generalized
voter-friendly ballot, Approval requires me to vote A=B=C=D... when I really
like A a lot better than the others. But that method doesn't have any way
for me (the voter) to tell it that I do. So no matter how an approval count
turns out, I'm likely to believe my vote didn't matter.
On the other hand, I think Approval is PERFECT for party primary elections,
since in addition to the voter's first preference with respect to the
candidates' positions on the issues, the voter has to think about how likely
her party is to win the general election. If she can vote her favorite and
the other candidates she "could live with" the party would be likely to
present better (non-polarizing?) alternatives for the general election.
The odd thing is that no party has actually done that. If using Approval
would let a party pick a candidate that's more likely to be accepted by
thevoters, then why wouldn't they? They could only gain. The same holds
if what the parties are really interested in is finding candidates at
+/-0.5, not +/-0.001 - a better election method would let them do so
more consistently, which would give a better result (to them).
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