Talk:Imagine Democratic Fair Choice

Hi Jobst -- this is a very interesting idea. Extremely simple ballot.

I have a few questions, however:

Could you allow more published rankings to be used, as long as they were registered sufficiently in advance of the election? This would allow, for example, labor unions, political parties, newspapers, etc., to make recommendations, and voters could choose the one they prefer.
The approval aspect isn't clear to me -- is it equal ranking or not? I.e., when a voter approves of a bunch of alternatives, are they given equal rank or is the voter grouping them just below the favorite using ordering specified by the published ranking? What if the published ranking has equal rank of 5 for 2 candidates, but the voter approves one of them and not the other? That needs to be spelled out a bit more clearly.

--Araucaria 11:22, 29 Mar 2005 (PST)

Perhaps you should also add a link to this from other pages? --Araucaria 11:23, 29 Mar 2005 (PST)

how to interpret bullet votes

Great idea Jobst! I would rather vote under this system than any other that I know of (except in small groups where direct interaction makes other nice methods practical).

Now how can we make use of the difference between a ballot that gives direct support to Bob without showing any "also approved", and a ballot that gives direct support to Bob and also puts an approval mark for Bob, but for no other candidate?

I suggest that in the first case, the voters ballot be identical to Bob's published ballot, including approval cutoff if it has one, while in the second case, Bob's published order is used, but the approval cutoff is placed just below Bob, reflecting the voter's wish to approve only him.

What do you think?

One other comment. Many of the IRV proposals allow ranking of only three candidates. This ballot is simpler but more expressive.

Suppose the IRV voter would have ranked A>B>C, and the DFC ballot voter wants to do the same, but candidate A's published ballot is A>C>B.

If the FDC voter truly disagrees strongly with his favorite candidate on this order, then he can approve only A and B.

His ballot will become A>B>>C, the same order as the IRV voter's ballot, and also reflecting the strong preference.

Information theory says to encode the most frequently used words with the shortest code words. That's one way of looking at DFC ballots.

Forest