At 11:40 AM 12/2/2008, Jonathan Lundell wrote:
That's not really what an approval cutoff is. An approval cutoff is
used by some methods to denote "the candidates above are those I can
accept; those below, I really don't like". At least that's what I
understand, though some methods may reward strategic placement of
the cutoff as well.
Abd's point, and mine, is that such interpretations of some "approval
cutoff" isn't really justified, except perhaps as a shorthand way of
describing how a voter *might* behave. The only instructions a voter
is bound by the rules to follow are "vote for as many as you choose;
the candidate with the most vote wins".
Thanks, Jonathan. Indeed, Approval minimally binds the voter. The
voter may vote any pattern at all, and, with decent rules, can even
vote "None of the above," by writing it in, thus contributing to
majority failure explicitly, causing a runoff (again, with good
rules. We often think only of public elections, as well, so, I'll
note, Robert's Rules of Order, Newly Revised, requires an election to
be repeated if there is majority failure, even if the voting is done
with preferential voting. They are not taken in by the phony "last
round majority" arguments. The last round of an IRV election is *not*
very much like a real runoff, and results show that.)
Indeed, we wouldn't even need to provide the instruction described
except that voters may otherwise assume that they are restricted to
one vote. This is, purely and simply, voting with an arbitrary
restriction removed.
We don't think of it that way -- and I think Brams didn't think of it
that way -- because we are so accustomed to vote-for-one Plurality.
Plurality makes very good sense in a direct democratic assembly,
because the assembly doesn't automatically accept any election
result, it votes on that as a separate question. (Sometimes the rules
set this aside and consider an election automatically accepted if a
majority was found. Obviously, in a Plurality election, if a majority
has been found, and if people voted sincerely for their favorite,
they have a Condorcet winner, pretty good for such a simple method!
Majority requirements, unless the majority is forced, *must* find a
true Condorcet winner with sincere voting.
But, of course, voters in Plurality don't vote with "full sincerity."
In determining their favorite, many of them will discount
possibilities that they consider considered unlikely. That's easy to
fix, and, as I've pointed out, when voting is by show of hands, it's
already fixed. When the name of your favorite is called out, voters
would generally raise their hands. There is nothing stopping them
from raising their hands for someone else. I have no idea how often
this actually happens, but I'm sure it happens. It would be detected
if the sum of votes exceeded the number of voters present, but, in
fact, that often wouldn't show it, because of abstentions, and it
might be thought that there was a counting error -- and usually it
would be moot.
There is no rule in RRONR against voting for more than one. There is
only advice to the clerk not to count such votes "because the
intention of the voter is not clear." That's an assumption, not a rule.
Assuming that the voter a preference ranking, the decision as to where
to place the cutoff is inherently a strategic decision. Obviously I
should vote for my favorite candidate. It's also obvious that if, for
whatever reason, I vote for candidate X, I should vote for all the
candidates that I prefer to X. What's not obvious is where to place
the cutoff. Making that calculation optimally, especially in the light
of imprecise polling, is difficult to impossible.
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