Rob Brown wrote: > Here is a UI I am working on for doing for ranking > candidates: http://weblogz.com/voting/2000pres.html
It's a good-looking, easy-to-use interface. The only improvement I'd suggest would be to allow tied ranks anywhere in the ballot, so that a Browne>Keyes>Buchanan=McCain=Bush>Bradley=Gore>Nader vote would be allowed. That way you could get rid of the notion of picking and unpicking since every option would be somewhere on the ballot.
I am not sure how to get rid of the notion of picking and unpicking while maintaining an intuitive interface. Note that picking all candidates, in order from first choice to last choice, allows you to automatically set their order without having to keep pressing the move up and move down buttons. I think having to use only the move up and move down buttons would be much more tedious, and more influenced by the ordering of candidates on the ballot.
You are correct that there is no way to set two candidates as equal (aside from all the non-picked candidates which of course are treated as being equally disliked). I considered it, but the reasons I chose not to allow this option are: 1) it seemed to complicate things, and I want to keep the interface as simple as possible, and 2) the closer the election method comes to being strategy free, the less value it seems to have to the voter to set two candidates as equal. If things really behave as we'd like them to, there should be no advantage to the voter of setting two candidates equal vs. just flipping a coin and putting one ahead of another. So why give them an option that doesn't really benefit them? I think it would only serve to confuse, and make them ask "why would I want to do that?"....which I doubt we could provide a simple answer to.
I generally prefer Schulze's beatpath to Ranked Pairs, but the ranking returned by Ranked Pairs has an important advantage: Every candidate beats pairwise the one just below him in the ranking.
Really? That is not at all my understanding. If it were true, things would be a lot easier for me.
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My personal opinion is that directly using Approval Voting would be ideal for online polls when voters are allowed to change their vote in light of more recent results. The running poll results would be very easy to display and understand and the voting interface could be extremely simple.
Well, I can see from your sig you are a fan of approval voting, and there is no question that I could make a much simpler interface for an approval voting ballot. (thereby reducing the need for my ui/dhtml stuff....hmmm, maybe not a wise move on my part! :) ). I prefer condorcet and ranking because to me it seems to have less strategy involved, and better allows people to fully state their true preferences, but I understand that these issues can be debated forever.
-rob
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