Re: [EM] Best Single-Winner Method (steve bosworth)
The final version that I proposed was essentially a three slot version of
Majority Judgment where the grades are Preferred, Acceptable, and
Unacceptable:
If some candidate is the most preferred on more than half of the ballots,
elect the most preferred, otherwise the most approved.
["most approved" means marked unacceptable on the fewest ballots]
This is simpler than MJ in a few ways: (1) the definition, including how to
count requires fewer words. (2) Ballots are simpler ... fewer boxes per
candidate. (3) It is the minimum change from Approval that preserves the
FBC, Monotonicity, and Clone Independence, with enough resolution to
distinguish Favorite, Compromise, and Dispised by different grades when so
desired.
That said, allowing the proxy option is such a great improvement in
simplicity that it could offset the loss in simplicity incurred by
(unnecessarily) increasing the resolution from 3 to 5, and incorporating
the details of the refined tie breaking scheme of MJ, depending on the
electorate.
It depends on whether the members of the electorate (i.e. voters) would
appreciate the increased expressivity of the MJ ballot, or consider it to
be a nuisance.
How about a three slot version of Bucklin with a proxy option box, and a
front end check for a ballot CW thrown in at no extra cost?
Forest
Sennet Williams, Forest Simmons, Robert Bristow-Johnson, Abd dul Raman
Lomax, and Chris Benham have recently addressed each others? claims about
IRV, 3-slot Methods, IBIFA, and Asset. This discussion prompts me to
request some help later after I have clarified several issues.
Firstly, please correct me if I am mistaken but currently I am assuming
that we all would ideally want the Best Single-Winner Method:
- To be simple enough so voters can both use it and understand how it
is counted; - To minimize the wasting of citizens? votes (see below), and
- To guarantee that the winner among 3 or more candidates is the
candidate most supported by at least 50% plus one (an absolute majority) of
all the citizens voting, and - To offer as few incentives and possibilities for voting tactical.
Given these desires, currently I see Majority Judgment (MJ) as superior to
all of the above methods on each of these counts. However, since the above
discussions have not mentioned MJ, I assume that many contributors would
reject this claim for MJ. This is why I would very much appreciate
receiving any of your clarifications or explanations of how my claim for MJ
cannot be sustained. What important flaws to you see in MJ?
To help you to marshal your criticisms of MJ, please let me explain more
full my own understandings and reasons for favoring MJ. Firstly, I see a
citizen?s vote as being wasted quantitatively to the degree that it fails
equally to help one of their most trusted candidates to win. A citizen?s
vote is wasted qualitatively to the degree that it instead helps to elect a
candidate whom they judge less fit for office, rather than an available
candidate judged to be more fit.
Other than in MJ, such waste is present in all the existing methods,
whether they ask voters to rank, score, or approve as many of the
candidates as they might wish. Of course, most dramatic is the waste
provided by plurality or First-Past-The-Post voting.
To counter qualitative waste, Balinski and Laraki (Majority Judgment, 2010
MIT) argue that our capacity for judging qualities of human behavior can be
most meaningfully expressed in an election by each voter grading each
candidate?s suitability for office as either Excellent (ideal), Very Good,
Good, Acceptable, Poor, or ?Reject? (entirely unsuitable). These grades
are more discerning, meaningful, and informative than merely expressing
preferences or using numeric scores[MOU1] , X?s or ticks. Such grading
makes it more likely that the highest quality candidate will be elected in
the eyes of the electorate.
Each candidate who is not explicitly graded is counted as ?Reject? by that
voter. As a result, all the candidates will receiv the same number of
evaluations, but a different set of grades from the voters. The Majority
Judgment (MJ) winner is the one who has received grades from an absolute
majority of all the voters that are equal to, or higher than, the highest
median-grade given to any candidate. This median-grade is found as follows:
- Place all the grades, high to low, top to bottom, in side-by-side
columns, the name of each candidate at the top of each of these columns. - The median-grade for each candidate is the grade located half way
down each column, i.e. in the middle if there is an odd number of voters,
the lower middle if the number is even.
If more than one candidate has the same highest median-grade, the MJ
winner is discovered by removing (one-by-one) any grades equal in value to
the current highest median grade from each tied candidate?s total until
only one of the previously tied candidates currently has the highest
remaining median-grade.
Also, in contrast to the alternatives, Balinski explains how MJ reduces
by almost half, both the incentives and opportunities for effective
tactical voting. Thus, each voter has every appropriate incentive, not
only to vote but to reveal their honest evaluations of each candidate.
Thus, to me, using MJ should be simpler and more satisfying because
grading many candidates is both easier and more meaningful than ranking or
scoring them. Also, finding and comparing the median-grades of all the
candidate is quite simple. Unlike MJ, IRV, Condorcet methods, and Scoring
do not guarantee the election of the candidate most preferred by at least
50% plus one of all the citizens voting. Unlike IRV but like Condorcet
methods and Score, MJ does not eliminate any candidate until the winner is
discovered.
Finally, I would favor the following Asset option to be added at the
bottom of each MJ ballot: Any citizen who currently feels that they do not
yet know enough about any of the candidates to grade them, can instead give
their proxy vote to the Register Elector who will do this for them. They
could do this by WRITING-IN the published code of that Registered Elector.
I look forward to your comments.
Steve