I'd like to say a few more things about the methods, correcting at least one
error of mine, and then
I'd like to briefly reply to a few statements in posts in the "Methods" thread.
First, my comments:
When I said that MDDA wasn't looking as good as PC, that was before I
re-found-out that the wv methods fail FBC. At
that time, I was asking what I'd liked so much about MDDA. Of course now I
realize that it was FBC compliance. So I
retract what I recently said about liking PC better.
With its compliance with FBC and SFC, MDDA is one of the top rank methods. One
of the top methods, period. I don't know
enough about the criterion compliances of other methods, such as DMC. But, for
their simplicity, and from the fact that I
know them to meet FBC and SFC, MDDA and MAMPO, along with ER-Bucklin(whole) are
the rank methods that now look
to me like the most likely best choices for proposing or polling about.
...because, before dealing with public proposal, one would have to have more
information than I now have about
the methods' criterion compliances and properties.
I appreciate the information that I've received so far here, regarding that
subject, and of course any additional information
that I can get. Of course I'll have to look for it too.
Even for polling people on alternative voting systems, which I intend to do,
I'd need to have a good idea, based in info regarding
lots of methods, which few rank methods would be the ones to ask about. A poll
must only include a few of the best alternatives.
Right now, I guess my poll will include Approval, Bucklin, MDDA, and MAMPO.
MDDA and MAMPO almost count as just one method, for the purpose of how much I'm
asking people to choose between, because
of course they're symmetrical use of the same two standards.
Of course if everyone rejects those, I might try Range Voting.
Matt--
You're a bit unfair to rank methods. You said that it's difficult to figure out
the right strategy.
Approval voting is easiest when some candidates are acceptable and some are
entirely unacceptable: Just vote for the acceptables.
If you have no information about winnability, then the strategy is simply to
vote for all the above-average candidates.
But if there aren't "unacceptables", and if there is winnability information of
some kind, then Approval is inherently a strategic method.
Approval voting is strategic then. As I said, a good strategy is to just vote
for all candidates who are better than what you expect
from the election.
Bucklin has Approval-like strategy, with, as I said, 3 protection-levels
instead of two. If it's clear who belongs in each protection category,
then the strategy isn't difficult. Other than that, I don't think Bucklin's
strategy is known, to the extent that Approval's simpler strategy
is known. But, knowing who you'd vote for in Approval can inform your Bucklin
voting, because Bucklin lets you rank people you wouldn't vote
for in Approval, safe in the knowledge that you've equally top-ranked the best
set of candidates.
Condorcet(wv), MDDA & MAMPO can be more free of strategy if no one falsifies
preferences, due to their SFC compliance.
But, if some voters are likely to use burying strategy, then it's desirable to
thwart them, and enforce the methods' SFC benefit,
by refusing to rank the candidates of the likely reversers. If that sounds
complicated, it isn't really. Just use some judgement about
how far down you rank. Don't rank the really odious candidates, or the ones who
(or their supporters) are antagonistic to your
candidate.
Additionally, of course, the buriers intended victims have the same polling
information as do the buriers. And it isn't possible to
organize a large scale burial strategy without it leaking to the intended
victims. Burial only works against people who are trying to help you.
And, finally, what if the burial succeeded, this time. What about subsequent
elections. Do you think that party will get ranked in the
victims' rankings again?
Oh, one more thing, in the above-listed methods, as I said, to steal the
election for a candidate by burial requires that a large fraction of his
favorite-supporters do burial. And thwarting and penalizing the burial requires
only a small fraction of the intended victims to
truncate the buriers' candidate.
I don't agree that rankings are awkward or painful to vote. I know whom I like
better than whom. But I'll agree with you on this:
I consider our elections to consist of acceptables and unacceptables. That kind
of election is _made for_ Approval. Bucklin, however,
can let you rank among the acceptables, while still giving them full SDSC
protection from the unacceptables, if they have majority
support. And if they don't have majority support, not method can save them.
Likewise, MDDA and MAMPO make the same thing possible.
And no one needs to vote 50 times in succession.
Someone quoted James Green-Armytage as saying that Approval is "vulnerable to
strategic manipulation" (!)
What does he mean? (Rhetorical question)
Approval, like all methods to some degree, of course has strategy. But calling
strategy "manipulation" implies that the strategy
is tampering with and changing a rightful result. What rightful result, in
Approval, is being tampered with by strategy.
Strategy is merely the determination of how to vote, to maximize your
expectation. Some kinds of elections require strategy
in Approval, but to me, our current public political elections don't require
any strategy decisions, other than "vote for acceptable
candidates and don't vote for the entirely unacceptable ones."
"Vulnerable to" implies the same thing.
Those words imply an unsupported assumption.
If James is here, maybe he'd like to explain what he means.
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