At 12:31 AM 5/27/2010, Jameson Quinn wrote:
As Abd already said, you can avoid the runoff if only one candidate has a majority. Abd's Bucklin proposal tricks many voters into extending more approvals to decrease the chances of a runoff.
Tricks? I don't know if the runoff will cause voters to add more approvals or to reduce them. This is what I think: it sets an absolute preference based on the perceived utility of completing the election, which is relatively small compared to the value of the office being filled by the right candidate. It's enough to *encourage* a few approvals, but the existence of the runoff may, contrariwise, discourage them.
What's wrong with encouraging voters to add more approvals? They tried, in Okalahoma to *force* voters to add more approvals. They *require* voters in Australia to add lower preferences (in most jurisdictions). I don't support that, either one of those. But *allowing* it? With, simply, natural consequences either way?
My proposal, the one that started this thread, is simpler to describe and count than Abd's, and it makes extending second-rank approval (and thus typically avoiding a runoff) rational for voters. I think that that will be more effective than tricks**.
Bucklin, very similar to what I'm proposing, was widely used for a time. We know that some voters don't like being restricted to three ranks in RCV. Additional expression, *if voluntary*, is, in my book, a good thing. With three ranks, Bucklin starts to get much closer to using a Range ballot, and it allows four candidates to be ranked.
My proposal again: Voters rank each candidate as preferred, approved, or unapproved.
So you have an explicit disapproved rank? How is this treated compared to a blank?
If any candidates have a majority ranking them at-least-approved, then the one of those which is most preferred wins outright.
Right. With quite possibly bizarre outcomes. Now, I can see a value to it, and that's why, in fact, I want to make sure that there is a runoff if the approval winner is beaten by another (by ranking). Why I'd want to use first preferences for this determination, only, I don't know and don't understand, except that first preference *tends* to be stronger preference.
This method is somewhat ameliorated by being ER in all ranks. But having three approved ranks instead of two allows far better expression of preference strength. It doubles the expressivity. On the other hand, as designed, the ballot is balanced. Mr. Quinn, from this point of view, incorrectly, perhaps, assigned values to the ranks, instead of his 1, 0.75, and 0, it should be 1, 0.5, 0. But that isn't used in this present statement of the method. It's simply Range analysis.
If not, then the two candidates which are most preferred against all others (ie, the two Condorcet winners based on these simple ballots, or the two most-preferred in case of a Condorcet tie) proceed to a runoff
Utility theory would not suggest his pair. Utility theory suggests the sum of scores candidates. I only suggest including a Condorcet winner because of conflict between utility theory and democratic majority theory. If a result is to be based on "greater summed good," the majority should accept it.
[...] I didn't see this note until the end, here:
**Insofar as voters agree with the statement "I trust society to get the right answer, even if it's not the one I agree with", it's not a trick. Most people don't seem to believe that, though.
It's not a trick in any case. It's quite open and clear. Do you want to see a decision made now, or do you prefer it to be deferred? This is the choice faced by voters in repeated ballot, it's perfectly ordinary. Do they want to complete the election, or do they want to keep voting until the cows come home? It creates a certain natural force toward compromise, not enough to cause people to abandon what is important to them, but to relax their standards *a little.* Bucklin naturally does this within a single ballot, so rerunning a Bucklin election extends it a bit more, with an opportunity for the voter to revise the voting robot instructions that a Bucklin ballot represents.
Basic concept: A Bucklin ballot is a Range ballot where the voter places candidates into utility classes; in original Bucklin there were three classes all approved, plus a disapproved class. Voter placement of candidates in these classes was relatively unconstrained, compared to most methods. That is, equal ranking was allowed in third rank, and empty ranks were allowed (which is significant only for truncation and an empty second rank.) The method then simulates three approval elections with declining approval cutoff, seeking a majority. I see no reason to prohibit equal ranking in first and second rank: we should remember that when we unnecessarily prohibit possibly meaningful voter behavior, we cause ballots to be spoiled. Equal ranking has an obvious meaning: relatively low preference strength, or a strategic decision to equal rank because one of the candidates is considered no-hope. This allows voters to vote sincerely for no-hope candidates without *any* loss of strategic voting power; with equal ranking such equal ranking is simply moot for election purposes. But people vote for other purposes than electing candidates, witness Ralph Nader voters in 2000.
Bucklin, in fact, provides such good handling of ranks that a voter could almost always sincerely rank without loss of strategic voting power, so the major effect of allowing overvoting is to make the voter's decisions easier. If you have trouble deciding which of two candidates you prefer, then equal rank them!
The finer the allowed ratings, the easier the decisions actually get. A voter who is obsessed about whether to rate a candidate at 74 or 75 should get a life. It's already overkill, probably at a choice between 7 or 8! It's only a hundredth of a vote in the first case, or a tenth of a vote in the second (assuming Range 100 and Range 10)! I think that Range 4 (with rating 1 not used) just begins to be decent in this respect. Instead of just one or two approved levels, I have three, and this is useful even if I only want to approve two candidates. I can rate my favorite at the top, assuming it's easy to figure out which candidate is the favorite. If I think of two candidates as clones, I can top-rate them both (if ER is allowed). Or I can minimally approve, rating 2, giving my favorite the best chance to win before the votes are collapsed as approvals, or I can rate my second best at 3, indicating that there is a preference, all right, it's significant, but I will also be quite pleased if this candidate is elected. (With rating 2, I'm revealing that I'm actually about neutral, neither offended or pleased, the result is roughly what I think I have a right to expect.)
I've seen people interested in voting systems assume that a system is difficult, because all the strategic implications of each vote, because the *exact optimum strategy* isn't necessarily easy to fix. But that's based on overthinking it. A good system will amalgamate preferences in such a way that when a decision is difficult to make, it has little likely impact. Do I rank one candidate above another, or equal rank them? If that's a hard decision, either choice is probably roughly correct. And in a Bucklin system, it's a small shift in the result, not a large one (through Range analysis, in a hybrid Range/Bucklin system).
Bucklin/Runoff, with good ballot analysis if a majority is not found, frees voters to put together a sincere categorization of candidates; in the primary, the basic question is fairly simple. Given what you know now, would you prefer to elect this candidate, or would you rather wait to make that decision in a runoff? If you prefer to elect now, approve the candidate in one of the approved classes. If not, don't.
And then place the candidates in the classes simply: put your favorite on top, put the least favorite approved candidate on the bottom approved rank. And if there are any left, you consider which is better for them: top, middle, bottom approved rating. If that decision is difficult, again, you are overthinking. My guess is that the difficulty would only involve one rank step. In most Bucklin elections, quite likely, all the ranks collapse so which approved rank you put the candidate in will only matter if no majority is found. And how it matters depends on the exact runoff determination method, which is what we've been discussing. If a preference is important to you, express it, assuming there are enough ranks available. If it's not important, don't express it unless it's easier to express it than not. More ranks makes it easier, as long as there are enough ranks to rank all candidates, if that's what you want to do.
That is, I'd like to see the ballot be Borda-like, at least as many ranks as candidates. But with equal ranking and thus empty ranks allowed, which, of course, makes it a Range ballot.
(Which shows, in fact, that Borda is just Range with a restriction on the voter, a restriction that causes the basic Borda pathology. Restricting voters without good cause is generally a Bad Idea. Tell me again why we don't want to *allow* voters to equal rank!)
Voting systems need to be flexible, to handle, sometimes, large numbers of candidates. Other times there may be anything from none to one, and on up. In San Francisco, I've seen 23 candidates on the ballot. Plus some approved write-ins. Three ranks on an RCV ballot in that place is very tight, particularly because equal ranking isn't allowed. If it were allowed, three ranks might even be enough. But once one is thinking this way, IRV is a lousy canvassing method, there is no good reason to put up with its flaws.
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