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Consecutive Runoff Approval Voting: Difference between revisions
Consecutive Runoff Approval Voting (view source)
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imported>Robert K. Joyce (blues) No edit summary |
imported>Robert K. Joyce (blues) No edit summary |
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Perhaps some adjustment of the consecutive runoff approval voting method described below would be appropriate. This writer has been running tests using that method on political websites, and it has be found that many people holding the currently dominant perspectives are not prepared to accept a method that requires three-consecutive runoffs. It is also challenging to construct an experimental straw poll that does not instigate arguments (or worse). What was found, however, is that more people are amenable to a method that only requires two consecutive runoffs.
It seems appropriate to make certain points that were brought up in the discussion of the three-runoff method below. Consecutive runoff approval voting was designed to comply with three dominant principles: removal of the black hat syndrome (also called the spoiler syndrome), the ability to count a ballots at the voting station level in such a way as to produce simple numerical sums that can then be added into larger tabulations, thus avoiding any need to send any complex information to the larger tabulations, and achieving a method that provides extreme overall simplicity. It does seem to comply with these principles. The third principle that two-consecutive runoff voting is required to comply with is that it must harbor no black hat (spoiler) syndrome. This method always results in an absolute majority winner, so by some definitions, it may not constitute a "winner take all" method. The structure of the two-runoff method is as follows.
TWO-CONSECUTIVE RUNOFF VOTING:
In the first runoff, the approval method is used to choose exactly two candidates to run in the second runoff. The first runoff is simply an approval election; each voter can give just one vote to as many candidates she or he "approves of," or finds acceptable. There is one practical consideration, however, due to the potential problem of voters casting an inordinate number of votes. So it would seem advantageous to limit the total number of votes that each voter can cast to some arbitrary number. A limit of 20 is suggested, but many people holding currently dominant perspectives seem to prefer a limit of 10. At the end of the polling, all of the votes are simply added up, and only the two candidates with the most votes go on to the second runoff.
The second runoff is quite simple; the two remaining candidates run against each other, and the one who achieves an absolute majority becomes the winner. Obviously, there can be no black (spoiler) syndrome, since there can be no third candidate.
The design of this method was undertaken with the express assumption that some interested party will often, if not always, attempt to use the black hat (spoiler) syndrome to circumvent the will of the voters. Therefor, we are not merely attempting to attain a method that precludes "voter strategies," but to gain a method that precludes the black hat (spoiler) syndrome from being exploited by dominant special interests. This is a somewhat subtle consideration, which only becomes more tricky if it is assumed that special interests will actively attempt to use this syndrome to manipulate elections.
It seems reasonable to assume that any ranked voting method will be susceptible to black hat manipulation, since it appears obvious that if special interests vigorously promote black hat candidates, voters will effectively be forced to cast their highest rank vote for whatever, generally minimally, acceptable candidate is perceived as likely to defeat the black hat candidates. In fact, this writer has engaged in countless discussions, in which it appeared that, with only four, at most, in a race, most (if not all) reasonably simple methods of ranked voting could enable a vote for a white hat candidate, from the perspective of some individual voter, to eventually lead to the actual election of a candidate that that individual voter perceives as a black hat. And this is a result that would have been avoided if the voter had given a gray hat candidate their highest rank vote. But at minimum, it seems reasonable to assume that a voter would tend to cast his or her first rank ballot for a likely-to-win gray hat candidate, rather than a "long shot" candidate, if a strong black hat is in the race. This would eventuate in the evolution of a closed two-party system.
Two-consecutive runoff voting cannot cause the situation in which a voter causing the election of a black hat by giving a high-rank vote a white hat, or even a case in which a voter perceives a need to give a high-rank vote to a gray hat in order to avoid the election of a black hat. And the obvious reason is that there are no ranks involved in this method. However a "gray hat" syndrome is present, in that, if a black hat is in the race, voters may feel some pressure to include some gray hats of "darker shades" in the first runoff if a black hat is in the race. However, this gray hat syndrome is vastly more benign than the black hat syndrome; for example, a voter could still vote for as many white hats as he or she desired.
It seems likely that the gray hat syndrome would be further ameliorated if a three-runoff method is employed. On the other hand, this method requires three consecutive runoffs, which present-day online straw poll voters seem to dislike.
THREE-CONSECUTIVE RUNOFF VOTING:
Observe below that I use hardly any mathematical methods to describe Consecutive Runoff Approval Voting. This is probably because I work largely in natural language study, and have decided that whenever the potential number of criteria appears to exceed the number of methods they might be applied to, mathematical analyses tend to be less than fruitful. I do have one very prominent criterion, which is that any proposed system of voting should be completely free of the Black Hat Syndrome (or "spoiler effect"). I have concluded that every method is susceptible to a Gray Hat Syndrome, in which the presence of a Black Hat "ogre" candidate could cause the election of a Gray Hat, where a White hat would otherwise have been elected.
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