Thanks to both of you for worthy effort.
On Sep 1, 2011, at 12:38 AM, Richard Fobes wrote:
OK, this is going to be controversial, but Jameson Quinn and I are
attempting to write one advantage for each of the four election
methods supported in our Declaration.
Below are the versions each of us have written. What does everyone
else prefer?
We know that the final result will be different from what either of
us have written, so please suggest improvements -- either as better
wordings or as requests for what to change.
If we cannot agree on this content, we can leave out these
paragraphs and let the readers investigate each method without us
offering any high-level perspective.
--------------- A voter's view by Dave Ketchum -----------
Mark on a ruler those you would be willing to promote toward winning,
assuming those that you prefer drop out for some reason (in deciding
on a value, consider what would be meaningful in the election method
to be used). Then consider the four systems of voting that might be
in place:
* Approval - vote for all that you have marked, perhaps excluding the
least-liked, for you are giving equal backing to all that you vote for.
* Condorcet system - rank all that you have marked, according to their
positions on the ruler, noting that this makes high-ranked preferred
over any lesser.
* Majority Judgment - rate those you would rank for Condorcet. Also
rate the least-liked to help vote counters see how you scale strength.
* Range - same as MJ.
------------- version from Jameson Quinn: -------------
Some examples of advantages claimed for each system are:
* Approval is the simplest of the systems, and thus, in places where
voters are wary of complexity, may have the best chance of passing.
Even at an academic conference on social choice theory, where few
argued that Approval was the overall-best system, it still received
the widest support. It also is a step towards any of the other
systems; any of the systems, if used with an approval ballot, ends
up being equivalent to approval. Therefore, after seeing what issues
arose under approval, we might be able to make a better-informed
choice of which other system to move on to.
* Condorcet systems give the best possible guarantee that the result
would be consistent with a two-way race. When there is a “Condorcet
winner” --- a single candidate who could beat any other candidate
one-on-one --- most people’s sense of fairness and democracy say
that such a candidate should win.
"two-way" means?
* Majority Judgment allows a score ballot, the most expressive
ballot type because it can show the strength of preferences. The
advocates of this system claim that it gives relatively little
incentive for dishonest, strategic votes. Also, by focusing on the
absolute quality of a candidate, rather than their quality relative
to other options, it may help avoid a situation where a polarized
electorate elects an unqualified compromise candidate just because
both sides prefer such a nonentity to seeing the other side win.
* Range also uses the expressive score ballot. This system has been
shown in simulations to give the results which best-satisfy the
voters. It gives the best results in this sense with any
predetermined fractions of honest and strategic voters. It is not
known if these simulations accurately reflect real voters, who might
use strategy in different amounts under different voting systems or
in different factions.
------------- version from Richard Fobes: -------------
Although we disagree about various characteristics of the four
supported methods, most of us agree that:
* Approval voting is the easiest election method in terms of
collecting preferences (either on ballots or verbally) and in terms
of counting.
* Condorcet methods provide the fairest results in the many cases in
which one candidate – the Condorcet winner – is pairwise preferred
over every other candidate.
When there is no single winner, the vote counting must decide among
those best approaching winning.
* Majority judgment uses score ballots (which collect the fullest
preference information) in a way that reduces the effect of
strategic voting.
* Score voting may provide the mathematically defined "best" overall
("optimum") results if voters vote sincerely instead of
strategically.
------------- end -------------
Thanks!
(We are getting close to having the next, and possibly final,
version ready to review in full.)
Richard Fobes
----
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