On Jun 1, 2011, at 11:38 AM, Kathy Dopp wrote:
I agree with everything you've said here re. simplicity etc.
Condorcet with Approval to break Condorcet cycles would be great.
Simple to explain, precinct-summable with the use of an NxN matrix,
with N= # candidates and the matrix diagonal available for other data.
(such as the total number of ballots cast or ?)
Sounds good until you think about Condorcet and Approval arguing as to
what quality is worth ranking. Approval wants ONLY desirable
candidates; Condorcet can afford low ranks in case all those given
higher ranks lose.
Note that each member of a Condorcet cycle has demonstrated CW ability
vs every non-member. Thus the cycle members are near to being tied,
and properly compete among themselves for one to become CW.
I like the idea of using Approval to count all except the last ballot
position, whatever that would be. In the US, given current voting
system capacities, that would be counting the first two ranked
positions.
Attempted recovery - but the voter may, OR may not, have ranked one
that would have been approved if the voter was thinking of Approval
(and, the voter may have ranked only two).
Upper margin error bounds could probably be calculated for each
reported Condorcet matrix precinct tally so that selection weights and
sample sizes could be calculated for post-election manual audits to
publicly verify the accuracy of the reported election outcomes.
Range voting would be too complex because it involves too much thought
and strategizing for voters to determine how many relative points to
give each candidate.
Agreed.
Some of the other methods for resolving Condorcet
cycles are too complex for most voters to understand and apply so that
they can check the calculations. IRV and STV methods are out, not
only due to their nonmonotonicity, and their failure to solve the
spoiler problem, but due to their fundamental unfair method of
counting ballots which makes manual counting and thus auditing for
election outcome accuracy virtually impossible.
Agreed.
We ought to focus on how to make Condorcet/Approval voting
understandable to the public and to election officials and show how it
could be used with existing voting equipment, the existing problems
with plurality it solves, etc. I could work on developing the
mathematics of post-election auditing sampling for it when I have
time.
Not agreed - see above.
Kathy
Date: Wed, 01 Jun 2011 02:46:20 + (GMT)
From: fsimm...@pcc.edu
It seems to me that thevoters are more worried about the ballot
type and ease of voting it than they are
of the exact counting rules. There are several Condorcet methods
that are clone proof and monotonic
without being too complicated. I agree with Kevin that "elect the
CW if there is one, else elect the
candidate ranked (or ranked above last) on the greatest number of
ballots" is plenty simple, and is much
more satisfactory than MinMax or Copeland in other respects.
But, as I said, what we really need to concentrate on is simplicity
in votinig, i.e. how do we make ballots
that easy to use for "Hodge, fresh from the plough," as Lewis
Carroll put it.
It has been averred many times on this list that in Australia,
where partial rankings are considered
spoiled ballots, the vast majority of voters fill out their ballots
by copying "candidate cards" which are
published sample ballots recommended by the various candidates.
Asset voting makes this automatic for 100% of the voters. That's
probably going too far, so how do we
get a compromise between Asset voting and Condorcet?
--
Kathy Dopp
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