Jameson, I like the idea of candidates submitting binding public rankings before the election. Besides resolving the "kingmaker" problem, it could be useful information to the voters in other ways as well..
----- Original Message ----- From: Jameson Quinn Date: Tuesday, May 24, 2011 4:41 pm Subject: Re: [EM] remember Toby Nixon? To: [email protected] Cc: [email protected] > I think DYN is my new favorite practical proposal. It's simple > and it would > work beautifully. > > The one downside of that system would be the possibility of > granting too > much power to a minority kingmaker. For instance, a 4% candidate > could have > the power to swing the election to either one of two 48% > candidates. They > might well be able to negotiate concessions for their party (or > worse, for > themselves personally) which amounted to, say, a 20% share of > the power, far > in excess of their actual support. The only way to minimize this > risk is to > minimize the enforceability of any promises made between the > voting rounds - > for instance, by ensuring that all cabinet positions can be > dismissed at > will. > > Hmm... another way to address this would be to have candidates > pre-decide > their full preference order. After the first round, they would > only be free > to set their threshold. This would halve the chances that they'd > end up as > kingmakers, which is fair, because the winning 51% coalition gets > essentially twice that much power. > > Anyway, this issue is actually a pretty good problem to have. > Giving a > slightly-larger minority of power to a minority in some > circumstances is not > the end of the world. > > I like it. > > Jameson > > 2011/5/24 > > > > > About six years ago Toby Nixon asked the members of this EM > list for a > > advice on what election method > > to try propose in the Washington State Legislature. He finally > settled on > > CSSD beatpath. As near as I > > know nothing came of it. What would we propose if we had another > > opportunity like that? > > It seems to me that people have rejected IRV, Bucklin, and > other methods > > based on ranked ballots > > because they don’t want to rank the candidates. Charles > Dodgson (aka Lewis > > Carroll) anticipated this > > difficulty in 1884, and he suggested what we now call Asset > Voting as a > > solution. > > Asset voting is the simplest solution to the spoiler problem. > Approval is > > the next simplest. IMHO > > anything much more complicated than Approval or Asset voting > doesn’t stand > > a chance with the general > > public here in America. For this reason most IRV proposals > have actually > > truncated IRV to rank only > > three candidates. This destroys IRV’s clone independence. > > Asset Voting in its simplest form tends to squeeze out the CW, > because when > > flanked closely on both > > sides by other candidates, the CW tends to have too few first place > > preferences (assets or bargaining > > chips) to survive. > > On the other hand Approval requires reliable polling > information for > > informed strategy. This fact makes > > Approval vulnerable to manipulation by disinformation. > > That brings us to Delegable Yes/No (DYN) voting, which is a > hybrid between > > Asset Voting and Approval > > that overcomes the weaknesses of those methods without > increasing the > > complexity to the level of IRV: > > In DYN you circle the name of your favorite candidate and then > optionally> mark “Yes” next to the > > candidates that you are sure you want to approve of, and “No” > next to those > > that you are sure that you > > want to disapprove of. You automatically delegate the rest of > the Yes/No > > decisions to the candidate that > > you circled as “favorite.” > > Those delegated decisions are made by the candidates after the > partial> results have been made public, > > so that no false polls can manipulate the strategy. > > What do you think? > > ---- > > Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em > for list info > > > ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
