On 6 Mar 2005 at 06:50 PST, Chris Benham wrote: > >> Oh, by the way, I would *not* allow equal rankings. Why not? I just >> don't like them. They strike me as an unnecessary complication and >> little more than a way to game the system. > > I think an ideal method in an ideal world should allow them; but I can see > that voters are not likely to be enthusiastic or to see any great point, and > that they could be untidy from the practical point-of-view. Also with paper > ballots, there could maybe be a theoretical possibility or suspicion that > some extra "1"s could be added after the ballots have been cast. >
This is a whole different can of worms. Any ranking scheme has the possibility of ballot tampering unless you design the ballot carefully. That is the one argument that plurality (SV-FPP) has over anything else, even approval. There are several ballot-checking strategies that could be used. The simplest is that all candidates would be ranked. But if there were 100's of candidates, it might be easier to simply enter a count of how many candidates were entered at a given rank. Here's a sample ballot: |<-- Best ............. Worst -->| 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Below A ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) B ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) C ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) D ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) E ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ... ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) Minimum ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) Approved Rank Number [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] at Rank The voter could provide a count of how many votes were entered at a particular rank. If the actual count differed, the ballot would be recognized as spoiled. Or they could enter a rank of "Below" for any candidate they specifically don't choose to rank. Ted -- Send real replies to ted stern at u dot washington dot edu Frango ut patefaciam -- I break so that I may reveal ---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info