On Aug 27, 2011, at 12:25 AM, Juho Laatu wrote: > On 27.8.2011, at 2.13, Jonathan Lundell wrote: > >> On Aug 26, 2011, at 1:17 PM, Juho Laatu wrote: >> >>> On 24.8.2011, at 2.07, [email protected] wrote: >>> >>>> But back to a possible generic meaning of a score or cardinal rating: if >>>> you think that candidate X would >>>> vote like you on a random issue with probability p percent, then you could >>>> give candidate X a score that >>>> is p percent of the way between the lowest and highest possible range >>>> values. >>>> >>>> Note that this meaning is commensurable across the electorate. >>> >>> This is the best proposal so far since this takes us as far as offering >>> commensurable ratings. Maybe we should add also voter specific weights to >>> the different issues. >>> >>> Voters could start from the set of issues that the representative body or >>> single representative covered during the last term. They could adjust those >>> issues a bit to get a list of issues that are likely to emerge during the >>> next term. That makes a list that is the same to all (and that makes the >>> opinions therefore commensurable). Weighting makes the results more >>> meaningful since to some voters some questions might be critical and others >>> might be irrelevant. Without the weights the ratings might not reflect the >>> preference order since we might have misbalance due to too many questions >>> of one kind or due to questions of varying importance. >>> >>> In principle one could collect the opinions also indirectly by generating >>> an explicit list of issues and asking voters to mark their opinion an >>> weight on each issue. That list could be structured or allow voters to >>> indicate the importance of each group of questions. It is however not >>> obvious how the questions should be grouped. Grouping could also influence >>> the results. It would be also difficult to the voter to estimate the level >>> of overlap between different issues. In practice one may get equally good >>> results by simply asking "how much do you think you will agree with this >>> candidate (from 100% to 0%)". >> >> I'm repeating myself here, sorry, but... >> >> 1. Why isn't this replacing one ineffable candidate utility with n ineffable >> issue-agreement utilities (where each issue utility is the (signed) issue >> weight)? > > Maybe because the voter answers question "how often do you agree" instead of > "how strongly do you agree". Time and number of occurrences are commensurable > but voters' interpretations of the chemical and physical reactions in their > brain and heart are not (maybe one approach would be to use some instruments > to measure brain and heart activity with some external device :-) ). With > weights added the question continues "... and estimate the importance of > those agreements". This is based purely on personal feelings as taken from > the brain and heart, but that should not destroy commensurability since all > the voters are still on the commensurable scale from 100% agreement to 0% > agreement, and the voters are still supposed to answer question "how often, > if all issues would get the time that they deserve".
Set aside the question of the meaningfulness or commensurability of utilities. My point is that such a scheme merely changes the need for a voter to determine one utility (for the candidate) to determining n utilities (for n issues). And the issues we care about tend not to be simple. > > The n issues could be all binary decisions, "agree" or "disagree". In that > case they are commensurable. If they are more complex, e.g. numeric > decisions, then the voter must estimate the level of agreement somehow. Maybe > the voter should decide on some hard limits to what is agreeable and then > decide which candidates agree with him and which ones do not. Also numeric > differences would do. This way we can (at least in principle) escape the > non-commensurable "strength of agreement" questions. > >> >> 2. One doesn't vote for a candidate strictly on predetermined issues. You >> don't know which issues will arise in the next 2-4-6-whatever years, and the >> work of an elected official (a president in particular, but also other >> offices) consists of more than voting on issues. > > Yes, but the set-up is the same for all voters. Voters will make wrong > guesses on what will happen during the next term, but in principle they will > all answer the same commensurable question and their answers will approximate > this ideal. ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
