At 10:39 PM 5/26/2010, Kathy Dopp wrote:
Yes. I agree with your scenario of not needing a runoff Abd ul.
You get the basic system you suggested simply by changing the line in the election code that prohibits counting more votes for an office than there are office-holders to be elected. One vote per voter per candidate (maximum!) is Approval. And so then you simply use Approval voting in a top-two runoff election. It does no harm and sometimes it will find a majority. Costs nothing extra to count except for the actual extra votes, which won't be a lot, usually. Enough to fix a spoiler effect, sometimes. A bit of a push towards a majority.
Bucklin is better because it allows people to express a first preference and gives that first preference a chance to win before additional approvals are brought in.
I believe that the fact is has an honorable history in the U.S. may help get implementations. It's precinct summable, no problem. You just count it as if it were three elections, same candidates. First choice election, second choice election, third choice election. And it's just sum of votes that you need in each rank. So three-rank Bucklin sums three ranks for each candidate. Theoretically, you wouldn't have to count the lower ranks until you know you need them, but I think it's rude to ask people to vote and then not count all their votes!
But the ballots themselves can also be used for Condorcet analysis, and even more so if a higher-resolution Range ballot is used. (For the Bucklin part, same idea as Bucklin, you add in the votes in each rating, starting at the top, until you have found a majority, or you have counted all the votes.)
Original Bucklin allowed, most implementations, the voter to rank as many candidates as desired in the third rank, but only one in first and second rank. Most voters wouldn't use it, but I can see no good reason to prohibit overvotes in those first two ranks. The only problematic kind of overvoting in Bucklin is where the voter votes for one candidate in more than one rank: those extra votes must be eliminated or the voter would have cast two votes for a candidate!
Original Bucklin counted them, I think, in the highest expressed rank. There is another option I think is slightly better, it actually improves the method a little, allowing more flexibility of expression. But I gotta go....
---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
