Kevin Venzke <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote ...

Subject: Re: [EM] Range Voting and Cardinal Ratings Runoff
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--- Forest Simmons <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> a écrit :
For this reason Kevin came up with the "Runoff Without Elimination" idea,
culminating in his "Gradual Approval," which I believe to be a superior
use of Cardinal Ratings style ballots.

I think I'd better note that I didn't come up with "Runoff Without Elimination" as a name or idea... I recall old archive messages where "RWE" was discussed by Mike Ossipoff and Donald Davison.


But you did invent "Gradual Approval." Right?


Brian Olson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote ...

First, Instant Runoff Normalized Ratings (IRNR) explained -
in a paragraph:
http://bolson.org/voting/methods.html#IRNR
slide show:
http://bolson.org/voting/IRNR_explaination.pdf   (219KB)
http://bolson.org/voting/IRNR_explaination.mov  (2.3MB)


<snip>

Forest wrote ...
Suppose that there are only three candidates, and you think that your
compromise C has a significantly better chance than your favorite F of
winning against the candidate D that you dislike the most, and that
there is a good chance that D will be one of the finalists.  Suppose
further, that F and C both have decent chances of getting into the
final round.

In this situation, you have an incentive to "bury" your favorite F,
i.e. to try and make F lose in the first round.


Brian replied ...

I don't think this can happen with IRNR.

If I truly prefer F>C>D, if I'm right about IRNR then it should be
impossible to find a configuration of votes for which it's better for
me to vote C>D>F (or C>F>D ?). In this hypothetical vote configuration,
if I vote honestly F>C>D, then D will be elected, but if I vote C
first, C will be elected. But this is not possible with IRNR because of
the re-normalization process that happens on each round.

If I vote F=1.0, C=0.8, D=0.0 and F is disqualified, then my second
round re-normalized vote is C=1.0, D=0.0 . In fact, no matter what my
rating of F and C (holding D constant at 0.0), if either of them is
eliminated in the first round, my second round vote will be {the
remaining of F or C}=1.0, D=0.0 . And if that doesn't elect someone I
want, nothing will.


Nothing will only because by then it is too late:

Suppose that F is the one that makes it to the final round and that F loses to D, but that C is preferred above D by more voters than not.

Then it would have been to your advantage to rate C at the top and F at the bottom, but now it's too late.

"Hindsight is 20/20, buy low, sell high, etc."

But if you were led to believe or strongly suspect (before voting) that C could beat D, while F could not, and that one of C or F would be eliminated in the first round, then you would be tempted to bury F before it was too late.

...

[Gradual Approval] sounds like an interesting method that I missed. Is there a
reference description of it?




It's easier to describe than to look up:


If there are n candidates, then there are n-1 rounds.

(For k between 1 and n-1) in round number k the approval cutoff for each ballot is calculated as the average rating of the top n-k+1 approved candidates of the previous round.

The winner of the final round is the method winner.

[When k=1 this makes sense if we agree that all n candidates comprise the set of top n winners of round zero.]

Note that the winner is either the head-to-head winner of the top two approved candidates of the penultimate round, OR someone who gets more approval than either of these when the approval cutoff is placed half way between them on each ballot.

If I remember correctly, according to Kevin, when the approval cutoff lands right on the rating of some candidate, then all candidates at that rating are given half approval.

I prefer the version that just gives them their rating divided by the max possible rating, so if they are closer to the top rating, they get more than half, closer to zero, less than half, etc.

In this version, then (automatically) if all of the candidates from the previous round share the max rating on your ballot, then they still get full approval, whereas if they are all at the bottom, they get zero approval.

In Kevin's version, this feature is not automatic, but it is put into the rules.

Forest
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