Talk:Approval voting

message: Replace the dead link with this link to the American Stats Association bylaws: http://www.amstat.org/about/bylaws.cfm  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.49.251.87 (talk) 14:17, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: This article is unacceptably inconsistent.
The article includes a section on "sincere" voting which asserts according to approval experts that for a single voter, both of the following ballots can be concurrently sincere votes (an election with candidates A B C):
A
and
A B
These cannot logically be concurrently sincere votes unless A > B > C, AND WE DO NOT CONSIDER “A B” TO BE EQUAL PREFERENCES. If you consider “A B” to be equal =, then ballot “A” cannot logically be a sincere vote because then A > B, which leads to a contradiction.
The article includes an entire section and numerous references to “sincere” voting based on understanding approval voting through the prism of a voter’s ordinal preferences (as stated in the article).
The contradiction in the article occurs through the selective omission of the “Later-No-Harm” criterion (in the comparison chart for this article). Approval voting’s failure of the criterion is essential to understanding one of its primary strategic voting flaws: Bullet Voting.
We cannot say on the one hand that every approval vote is “sincere” based on ordinal preferences, and then on the other hand disregard the application and failure of “Later-No-Harm” criterion on the basis that Approval cannot be understood through ordinal frameworks, when it can. This is a glaring contradiction and reflects a bias in the article.
Filingpro (talk) 20:01, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inclusion of "Sincere" Voting Without "Later-No-Harm" Leads To Contradiction & Bias 

message: Burr's dilemma only applies to single winner systems. See Burr dilemma  — Preceding unsigned comment added by BWernham (talk • contribs) 09:30, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Us for  'Multiple winners ' is NOT subject to Burr's dilemma 

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thread_title:  Blacklisted Links Found on the Main Page 

message: Doesn't www.doodle.com arguably use a version of the approval voting system? If so, should we mention it? 130.88.16.117 (talk) 12:02, 10 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Doodle.com ? 

message: Homunq I am open to your edits. For the reasons below I edited and perhaps we can improve...
The paragraph you added at top:
"If a voter knows exactly how all others will vote, and if their preferences for different tie results are optimistic, pessimistic, or utility-maximising, then there are no insincere approval strategies; that is, in order to get a better result, there is never a need to approve a less-favored candidate while disapproving a more-favored one.Endriss, U. “Vote Manipulation in the Presence of Multiple Sincere Ballots.” In Proceedings of the 11th Conference on Theoretical Aspects of Rationality and Knowledge, 125–134, 2007. http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1324268.
 However, if voters have limited knowledge of others' preferences, there are certain rare cases when a minority of voters can get a tiny advantage through an insincere vote.Examples where dishonest approval voting is optimal"
(1) I see a problem with the basic rhetorical structure:
If [voters have perfect info] then [all votes are sincere]. If [voters have imperfect info.] then [there are insincere votes].
(2) Why are we starting the strategy Overview section with "when voters have perfect information...?" When voters have perfect information, doesn't every voter who supports the Condorcet winner bullet vote, for any voting system that allows truncation? I don't understand your point or what this tells us.
(3) "preferences for different tie results" Aren't tie results rare? If the voter has perfect info, do we really need to put in the first sentence, in the Overview, the near impossible boundary case where a voter's 1st choice and last choice are tied, and they are debating whether to approve the second choice which also happens to tie? Really? Why put that here?
(4) "IF preferences for different tie results are optimistic, pessimistic, or utility-maximising" - what else can they be if not optimistic, pessimistic etc.? Must the first sentence of the Overview be so complicated? Are you saying unless the preferences for ties have one of these three qualities, the votes are no longer "sincere"?
(5) "get a tiny advantage" - what do you mean? Changing the winner of the election?
(6) "certain rare cases" "tiny advantage". Lets be more scientific about this, if you like. I suggest we find, for example, a statement from Brams for why Approval is less manipulable than other systems and a summary of his reasoning for it. We should also site Jack H Nagel on the issue with the Burr Dilemma where strategy can lead to instability and poor outcomes.
The qualification that Bullet-Voting and Compromising can be done "sincerely" and Push-Over and Burial are necessarily insincere, has several problems:
(7) The fact that Bullet-Voting and Compromising can be done "sincerely" has to do with Approval voting properties and because Approval voting happens to be vulnerable to these strategies (e.g. Compromise in ranked methods uses ordinal reversals).  Its not related to how problematic or damming the strategies are themselves, as you ingeniously imply. I would argue that Bullet Voting and Burying are the worst from a strategic voting standpoint, because they can lead to instability. Lets not have that argument here.
(8) It sounds like an oxymoron, these strategies can be done "sincerely". I think that's confusing and just doesn't make sense. The point about every Approval vote being "sincere", by a certain definition, should stand on its own. It shouldn't then be misconstrued to imply a judgement about which strategies are "sincere" and which are insincere.
(9) I object to making qualifications on the strategic voting until we first state what the strategies are. (Then we might talk about whether these strategies are "sincere" etc.)
Therefore I moved, and rewrote, what I could ascertain from your post, at the bottom of the Overview section.
Filingpro (talk) 06:41, 5 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edits To Strategy Overview 

message: Re: the current entry:
"If voters are sincere, approval voting would elect centrists at least as often as moderates of each extreme. If backers of relatively extreme candidates are insincere and "bullet vote" for that first choice, they can help that candidate defeat a compromise candidate who would have won if every voter had cast sincere preferences."
Many problems. Briefly, we define every approval vote in the article to be "sincere". What is a sincere vote? I don't know.
We need to fix this I don't have time right now. Quick suggestion:
When enough voters set their approval cutoff to approve more than one candidate, approval voting can elect a centrist candidate in common cases where plurality voting elects a minority candidate (due to vote splits). Approval voting can also elect a centrist candidate in certain cases where Instant-Runoff Voting may eliminate such a candidate in early rounds of counting. 
The devil is in the details here. As has been shown in other post on this talk "Approval Elects Extremist Candidate." Sometimes plurality can elect a centrist candidate when approval does not. How do we make this statement more scientific? Do we need to refer to single peaked preference simulations as per doctor Ka Ping Yee? To be clear, I support making a statement regarding approval voting's potential to elect centrists. It needs to be stated accurately. I think the above direction is an acceptable remedy.
Also the following entry needs examination/qualification:
"If voters are sincere, candidates trying to win an approval voting election might need as much as 100% approval to beat a strong competitor, and would have to find solutions that are fair to everyone to do so. However, a candidate may win a plurality race by promising many perks to a simple majority or even a plurality of voters at the expense of the smaller voting groups."
I propose:
A candidate competing in an approval voting election might need as much as 100% approval to defeat a strong competitor, and would have to find solutions that are fair to everyone to do so. In contrast, a candidate may win a plurality race by promising perks to a simple majority or even a plurality of voters, at the expense of the smaller voting groups.
Filingpro (talk) 21:15, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Section Other Issues & Comparisons - Problem "Centrists" "If Voters Are Sincere" 

message: I don't know what this statement means:
"Approval voting without write-ins is easily reversed as disapproval voting where a choice is disavowed, as is already required in other measures in politics (e.g., representative recall)."
I propose removing it as it seems to be redundant to the statement regarding approval allowing voters to vote against. Approval voting may have similarities to "representative recall" but it is not. I don't see its relevance here?
Filingpro (talk) 21:24, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Section Other Issues & Comparisons - Problem "reversed as disapproval voting"??? 

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replies: text: Fixed the dead link. GreenReaper (talk) 02:42, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: This image on the article unknowingly highlights a problem with using crosses on yes/no approval ballots. 
 This is an old issue, referred to for example in https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Graeme_Orr/publication/29454591_The_Conduct_of_Referenda_and_plebiscites_in_Australia_A_legal_perspective/links/53db0c2c0cf2a19eee8b43ff/The-Conduct-of-Referenda-and-plebiscites-in-Australia-A-legal-perspective.pdf
Mixed ticks and crosses unambiguously mean yes for the ticks, no for the crosses, but in isolation a cross is ambiguous. 
Is there a better example of an non-ambiguous completed approval ballot? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:15, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  ambiguous crosses 

message: Until yesterday, this was characterized as:
:Approval voting has been used in binding multi-jurisdiction elections for public office by the Independent Party of Oregon in 2011, 2012, 2014, and 2016. Because Oregon is a Fusion voting state, many legislators and statewide officeholders have been cross-nominated using the method.(citation)
As of a recent edit by 108.28.185.80, it now says:
:Approval voting has been used in privately administered nomination contests by the Independent Party of Oregon in 2011, 2012, 2014, and 2016. Oregon is a Fusion voting state, and the party has cross-nominated legislators and statewide officeholders using this method; its 2016 presidential preference primary did not identify a potential nominee due to no candidate earning more than 32% support.(3 citations)
The first description fully respects the Independent Party of Oregon process, which appears to have won a court battle to protect their privately-administered election.  It does, however, paper over the fact that this isn't a traditional publicly-administered election.  The second description clarifies that it's "privately administered", but then also refers to it as a "contest" rather than "election".  It adds two new citations, and inserts additional information about the "2016 presidential preference primary", citing a FairVote editorial criticizing Approval Voting.
Is the bit about the 2016 presidential preference ballot useful information to include?  Are the three citations now present the best sources to include?  Anyone have the time+energy+knowledge for a more concise, helpful, and neutral description of that election? -- RobLa (talk) 04:23, 26 June 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clearer description of 2016 Independent Party of Oregon election? 

message: I am trying to find more information about the use of two-term runoff voting with approval voting being used for the first term. I assumed that there was more research done about this subject, but all I could find was a proposal to implement it in the city of St. Louis. I also found a forum post that briefly mentions it along side a visualization, but that's it.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Monotype97 (talk • contribs) 15:58, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Approval with runoff elections