Re: [EM] Forest, re: your wanting to know how *we decide who came closest to beating the actual winner*.
Steve,
Thanks for your suggestion. It's exactly what we need for the case of MJ.
Now how do we appoly this to other methods?
On Mon, Jan 27, 2020 at 11:00 PM steve bosworth stevebosworth@hotmail.com
wrote:
From: steve bosworth stevebosworth@hotmail.com
Sent: Monday, January 27, 2020 10:56 PM
To: fsimmons@pcc.edu fsimmons@pcc.edu
Subject: Re: Forest, re: you desire for
Hi Forest,
With regard to your wanting to know how we decide who came closest to
beating the actual winner, I wonder if you missed my suggestion to you on
EM (January 26)? If not, you will find it below just before the copy of
your post. I would very much appreciate your feedback.
Thank you,
Steve
From: steve bosworth stevebosworth@hotmail.com
Sent: Sunday, January 26, 2020 3:31 PM
To: election-methods@lists.electorama.com <
election-methods@lists.electorama.com>
Subject: Re: Election-Methods Digest, Vol 187, Issue 27
From: Election-Methods election-methods-bounces@lists.electorama.com
on behalf of election-methods-request@lists.electorama.com <
election-methods-request@lists.electorama.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 26, 2020 2:40 PM
To: election-methods@lists.electorama.com <
election-methods@lists.electorama.com>
Subject: Election-Methods Digest, Vol 187, Issue 27
Today's Topics:
1. Re: Is there a standard way of defining "runner-up" in the
context of single winner elections? (Forest Simmons)
2. Re: Is there a standard way of defining "runner-up" in the
context of single winner elections? (Greg Dennis)
Message: 1
From Steve,
Below, Forest states that
But what I'm looking for is in the limited context of a single winner
election how o we decide who came closest to beating the actual winner? In
other words, who turned out to be the greatest rival of the winner for the
single seat of a single winner election?
As far as I can see, Balinski's Majority Judgment (MJ) provides the best
and simplest answer to this question. Unlike any alternative method of
which I'm aware, MJ firstly guarantees that the winner will be the
candidate who has received an absolute majority of all the votes that grade
that candidate most fit for the office. The runner-up would be the next
candidate who receives such a majority. I explained this in more detail as
follows:
Balinski and Laraki cogently argue *(Majority Judgment *(2010/2011 MIT)
that rather than asking citizens to rank, score, or mark candidates in some
other way, they should evaluate (or grade) them. To do this, citizens
more comfortably and conveniently grade each candidate’s fitness for office
as either Excellent (ideal), Very Good, Good, Acceptable, Poor, or
Reject (entirely unsuitable). These grades let voters more discerningly
express meaningful and informative choices than those offered by
preferences, numeric scores, Xs or ticks. Grading makes it more likely
that the highest quality candidates available will be elected: mayor,
governor, or president.
Each candidate who is not explicitly graded is counted as Reject by that
voter. As a result, all candidates have the same number of evaluations but
a different set of grades received 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 can be found as follows:
1.
Place all the grades, high to low, top to bottom, in side-by-side
columns, with the name of each candidate at the top of each of these
columns.
2.
The median grade for each candidate is the grade located half-way down
each column, in the middle if there is an odd number of voters, or in 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.
What do you think?
Date: Sun, 26 Jan 2020 13:26:48 -0800
From: Forest Simmons fsimmons@pcc.edu
To: VoteFair electionmethods@votefair.org, EM
election-methods@lists.electorama.com
Subject: Re: [EM] Is there a standard way of defining "runner-up" in
the context of single winner elections?
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Richard,
Thanks for your enthusiastic reply. I think it is a very good idea in the
general context of "how do we define second choice?"
But what I'm looking for is in the limited context of a single winner
election how o we decide who came closest to beating the actual winner? In
other words, who turned out to be the greatest rival of the winner for the
single seat of a single winner election?
We're not saying that this greatest rival should be the next candidate to
be seated in a multi-winner election.
For example. in an approval election the candidate with the second greatest
approval would be the chief rival of the approval winner by any reasonable
standard, but would probably not be the winner of the next round in the
multi-winner context because voters who approved this runner-up would have
the weight of their ballots cut in half for the second round.
So it's not exactly what I was looking for, but very good related
information!