Talk:Explicit approval voting

From electowiki

Analysis of elections vs the method

Actually I guess the Analysis should be its own article about the specific elections, not the method. Then it can be in Category:Elections Psephomancy (talk) 17:45, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Equivalence to score

The current article states this:

[Wikimedia's S/(S+O)] is mathematically equivalent to 2-level Score voting with averaging, though the abstain votes are explicit rather than implicit, and the levels are essentially (−1, +1) rather than (0, 1), so they are affected by the psychological consequences of disapproval voting.

Is that true? I don't think it is. Here's the FAQ answer for the 2017 version of the system:

Voters submit votes using a Support/Neutral/Oppose system. The votes will be tallied and the candidates will be ranked by percentage of support, defined as the number of votes cast in support of the candidate divided by the total number of votes cast for the candidate ("neutral" preferences are not counted, so this is the sum of support and oppose votes) - Support/(Support+Oppose). The candidates with support from at least 10% of voters and with the highest percentage of support will be recommended to the Board of Trustees for appointment, which occurs once additional verification of requirements is completed.

The way that I read that:

  • Step 1: Candidates must score higher than 10% approval. This is standard approval voting
  • Step 2: All "neutral" votes are no longer counted. The resulting election is now equivalent to a standard approval election, without the ballots of the "neutral" voters.

I'm not sure this can be converted to -1/0/+1 score system. -- RobLa (talk) 06:33, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

@User:RobLa: It can't be converted to a -1/0/+1 Score system, no. (-1, 0, +1) is mathematically identical to (0, 1, 2), and that produces different results in a few of the elections, as I said in the Analysis section.
It's not psychologically identical, though, as shown by Baujard et al. Explicitly voting "Oppose" is a form of negative voting, not just an abstention like it is under Approval. In standard Approval, you approve of some candidates, and leave the others blank, which can mean either disapproval or neutrality. It could be worded better. Psephomancy (talk) 04:58, 30 November 2018 (UTC)