Quoting Mike Ossipoff: 'to me, our current public political elections
don't require any strategy decisions, other than "vote for acceptable
candidates and don't vote for the entirely unacceptable ones."'
In the discussions of Approval and ranking, below, Mke's thought
applies to both. In the extreme, when this leaves no one to vote for,
simply vote for none (or, if forced, do whatever forced to do for one
candidate).
In Approval we have a count of how many considered each candidate
acceptable; with ranking we have counts in an x*x matrix as to how
many preferred each candidate over each other candidate.
On Oct 18, 2011, at 4:28 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
matt welland wrote:
On Mon, 2011-10-17 at 20:42 +0200, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
matt welland wrote:
Again, I think it is very, very important to note that the ranked
systems actually lose or hide information relative to approval in
both
these cases.
In what manner does a ranked method hide information? Neither
ranked ballot methods nor strategic Approval can distinguish
between "everybody's equally good" and "everybody's equally bad".
Note that in the first case the results and impact of a ranked
system
are actually worse than the results of approval. The political
pressure
to converge and appeal to a broad spectrum is greater under
approval
than the ranked systems. The evaluation of a voting system only
makes
sense in the context of all the other things going on in a
society. The
pressure on politicians to actually meet the needs of the people
is a
massively important factor and ranked systems appear to wash out
some of
that force which is a very bad thing IMHO.
Again, why is that the case? In Approval, you're either in or
you're out; but in ranked methods, the method can refine upon
those two groups and find the better of the good (be that by broad
or deep support relative to the others). If anything, this finer
gradient should increase the impact, not decrease it, because the
search will more often be pointed in the right direction.
A ranked system cannot give the feedback that all the candidates are
disliked (e.g. all candidates get less than 50% approval). It also
cannot feedback that all the candidates are essentially equivalent
(all
have very high approval).
While it is agreed that counts in Approval show the above, it needs
seeing that the x*x matrix can be read in the same way for ranking.
Neither does strategic Approval. In Approval, the best simple
strategy (if I remember correctly) is to approve the perceived
frontrunner you prefer, as well as every candidate who you like
better. In a Stalin election, if people were perfectly rational, the
left-wingers would approve Stalin if the other frontrunner was Hitler.
Well, perhaps people aren't perfectly rational. However, to the
degree they are honest, Approval can get into a contending third-
party problem. If you have a parallel universe where Nader is nearly
as popular as Gore, liberals would have to seriously (and
strategically) think about whether they should approve of Gore or
not - if too many approve of Gore *and* Nader, Nader has no chance
of winning; but if too many approve of only Nader, Bush might win.
Ranked systems essentially normalize the vote. I think this is a
serious
issue. A ranked system can give a false impression that there is a
"favorite" but the truth might be that none of the candidates are
acceptable.
See above.
Some ranked methods can give scores, not just rankings. As a simple
example, the Borda count gives scores - the number of points each
candidate gets - as a result of the way it works. The Borda count
isn't very good, but it is possible to make other, better methods
give scores as well; and if you do so, an "equally good/equally bad"
situation will show as one where every candidate gets nearly the
same score.
As for distinguishing "equally bad" from "equally good", there are
two ways you could do so within ranked votes. You could do it
implicitly, by assuming that the voters approve of the candidates
they rank and disapprove of those they don't; or you can do it
explicitly by adding a "against all" (re-open nominations, none of
the below, etc) virtual candidate.
Adding a virtual candidate is making trouble for voters UNLESS its
good justifies its pain.
Ironically by trying to capture nuances the ranked systems have
lost an
interesting and valuable part of the voter feedback.
A voting system should never give the impression that candidates that
are universally loathed are ok. If our candidates were Adol Hitler,
Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Benito Mussolini, Mao Zedong and
Leopold II of Belgium then approval would rightly illustrate that
none
are good candidates. However a ranked system would merely indicate
that
one of them is the "condorcet" winner giving no indication that
none are
acceptable.
Again, x*x is useful and available and ranking has no more need for
sick ranking than does Approval.
Here, an implicit solution would record heaps of blank votes, and an
explicit one would show the virtual candidate to be the CW.
I think any sane voting system *must* meet this requirement. The
ability
for the electorate to unambiguously communicate that none of the
candidates are worthy of the post under contest. I don't know how
to prove it but my hunch is that approval would be more
resistant to manipulation by the so-called "one percenter" elites
than
ranked systems.
Apparently this theory was designed without adequate understanding of
ranking.
James Green-Armytage's paper seems to show Approval as one of the
rules more vulnerable to strategic voting (see http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~armytage/svn2010.pdf
). Whether or not that would translate into one-percenter
manipulation, however, I don't know. I suspect that most of the
rules (e.g. various Condorcet methods, Approval, Majority Judgement)
would be sufficiently resistant. Even top-two seems to do well
enough to break Duverger's law.
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