Politics C‑class Mid‑importance

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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)[reply]

This part of the article makes no sense to someone who doesn't know what "Dichotomous preferences" means. It is not defined, and it's not obvious to know what it means through internet searches.

<<Dichotomous preferences Approval voting avoids the issue of multiple sincere votes in special cases when voters have dichotomous preferences. For a voter with dichotomous preferences, approval voting is strategy-proof (also known as strategy-free).[29] When all voters have dichotomous preferences and vote the sincere, strategy-proof vote, approval voting is guaranteed to elect the Condorcet winner, if one exists.[30] However, having dichotomous preferences when there are three or more candidates is not typical. It is an unlikely situation for all voters to have dichotomous preferences when there are more than a few voters.[25] Having dichotomous preferences means that a voter has bi-level preferences for the candidates. All of the candidates are divided into two groups such that the voter is indifferent between any two candidates in the same group and any candidate in the top-level group is preferred to any candidate in the bottom-level group.[31] A voter that has strict preferences between three candidates—prefers A to B and B to C—does not have dichotomous preferences. Being strategy-proof for a voter means that there is a unique way for the voter to vote that is a strategically best way to vote, regardless of how others vote. In approval voting, the strategy-proof vote, if it exists, is a sincere vote.[24>>

Then, in the criteria, it has a whole category of approval voting magically meeting all listed criteria when voters have dichotomous preferences, as compared to other forms of approval voting. But the article should evaluate criteria based on approval voting as a single concept, not with contingencies that don't exist in the real world. RRichie (talk) 12:28, 26 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure why you're saying dichotomous preferences aren't defined, since you quoted the paragraph that contains a definition ("Having dichotomous preferences means... ...does not have dichotomous preferences."). Could you please clarify?

As for the criteria table, I don't see that it makes much difference how many voter models are considered during analysis. So long as it's clear which model is realistic for a given situation, additional models simply contribute to the explanation of the theory, which includes, but is not limited by, the details of practical application. That said, I suppose there is some question of notability, and I'm not familiar with how exactly that should be applied to article content. Douglas Cantrell (talk) 07:00, 30 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You're correct, this unusual term is defined jere, although not in a very obvious way -- e.g., well after it is introduced. More broadly, however, you talk of "special cases when voters have dichotomous preferences." That's so unlikely to be a reality in the real world, that it seems odd to then present this situation as an intrinsic way to evaluate the method -- indeed on an equal basis with approval voting as a basic system. But it seems like the system as it really might be used in a full range of candidate scenarios, deserves to be treated quite differently than esoteric, angels-on-a-pin-type discussion of "in the event of this highly unusual, unrealistic theoretical situation, this is how the system handles different criteria.

In other words, if I were student or policymaker trying to understand the system and how it compares to other systems, this presentation of criteria would be quite confusing and likely misleading.RRichie (talk) 12:41, 2 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I too have real objections to that chart. If approval voting fails a criterion under any strategic voting regime then it fails that criteria as a whole, and that chart does not make that clear at all. Under a strong Nash equilibrium plurality voting passes the majority and Condorcet criteria, yet the system as a whole fails them both. Almost any system can produce the Condorcet winner - it only passes the Condorcet criteria if the system must always produce the Condorcet winner. This chart should properly show approval voting failing the Majority, Constitency & Participation, Condorcet, Condorcet Loser, and Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives criteria (assuming that the chart is accurate currently, which I'm not sure it is especially on the last one). RMCampbell (talk) 21:07, 16 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm fairly certain approval voting satisfies both criteria when the voter model is arbitrary cutoff, but the criteria table said that it fails both. Since the articles on those criteria specifically list approval voting as being a method which satisfies them, I've changed the table to reflect my current understanding. If I'm mistaken, I would appreciate a source that shows that approval fails those criteria. If none can be found, I would request that the table be modified to reflect the ambiguity of the situation while I look for a reliable source myself.

Also, I get the feeling this is going to come up: The addition of a candidate to a race can cause a change in the strategic situation, which can alter how people vote, which can in turn modify the outcome of an election, even if the new candidate is not the new winner. This is not, however, a violation of IIA. I'm not aware of any non-trivial method that would satisfy IIA if that were the case. IIA is only violated if the outcome is changed despite votes remaining the same, with the obvious exception of the removed candidate. Douglas Cantrell (talk) 07:38, 30 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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. 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)[reply]