Two topics: 1. Brief preliminary comments in reply to Jameson's MJ SFR posting. 2. Score vs Approval based on considerations that have been discussed.
1. At first I said here that MJ doesn't have SFT. But later I said that it does have SFR, but that it's SFR is more complicated than that of Score/Approval. Jameson's recent MJ SFR posting seems to confirm that conclusion. Brevity and clarity can be mutually incompatible,and so it is with the descriptions of MJ's tiebreaking bylaws. As Jameson briefly described the tiebreaking bylaws of MJ and CMJ, I didn't understand them. I think we can agree that MJ's and CMJ's tiebreaking bylaws, when described completely would add a lot of words to the methods' definitions. I think we can agree that those tiebreaking bylaws spoil any simplicity or brevity that those method would otherwise have had. 2. Though Score's SFR can probably be approximated by intuitive subjective judgement, something indistinguishable from sincere rating, there is probably a tendency to not rate at extremes when one should. I used to criticize Score because people who inbetween-rate can be had by strategizing voters. But if someone would inbetween-rate a candidate whom s/he should bottom-rate, in Score--Might s/he not approve the same candidate in Approval? Which would be worse? Voters tend to overcompromise. Score's flexible fractional-rating capability lets people rate where they most feel like, without Approval's stark choice, and would probably lessen, not increase, the overcompromise problem. But, as has already been discussed, of course Score-like middle-rating can be effectively achieved probabilistically in Approval, in public elections where there are many voters. It isn't difficult. 0-10 Score can be simulated by drawing one of ten numbers from a bag. 0-100 Score could be simulated by twice drawing (with replacement) one of ten numbers from a bag. For 0-10, if you want to give a candidate 7/10, and the pieces of paper in the bag are numbered from 0 to 9, then approve hir if the number that you draw is less than 7. If the pieces of paper are numbered from 1 to 10, then approve hir if the number you draw isn't more than 10--if the number is from 1 to 7. For 0-100, you should number the pieces of paper from 0 to 9. Draw a number. Write it down, Replace the piece of paper in the bag. Draw another number. Right it down to the right of where you wrote the first number. That gives you a two digit number. If you wanted to probabilistically give the candidate .87, then approve hir if the two-digit number you wrote is less than 87. A big advantage of Approval over Score is the much less labor-intensive count. Though Score is less computation-intensive than the rank methods, Approval is a lot easier and less laborious to count than Score is. As we all agree, count-labor = count-fraud-opportunity. Better to give the voter a little more to do, for fractional rating, than to increase the count-labor. There's nothing wrong with letting the voter be more directly involved with making the fractional rating, when s/he wants to fractionally rate. On another topic: By the way, Chris only suggests ICT as a 3-slot method. To me, because I don't recommend rank methods for official public elections, the only value of ICT or Symmetrical ICT is for informational polling. For that, it's desirable to allow unlimited rankings, because it's desirable to get as much preference information as possible. Chris said that more criteria are met by ICT when it's s 3-slot. Maybe, but I'm impressed and satisfied with ICT's and Symmetrical ICT's properties even with unlimited ranking. But I wonder how much less the count labor of Symmetrical ICT would be if it were only 3-slot. Would it start being competitive with Score in regards to count labor? Probably not, but I just thought I'd mention the question. I don't suppose that the instance-tallying of Score and MJ would work with a pairwise-count method. With N candidates, there'd still be N*(N-1) pairwise vote-totals to add up, even though finding which of 2 candidates a ballot ranks higher would be easier on a 3-slot ballot. Mike Ossipoff ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
