Transforming “STAR ballots" into "RCV ballots"
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How to transform “STAR ballots" into "RCV ballots" - scenario where STAR Voting has equal scores / rating.
Option 1 seems to the most straightforward and easy to understand - ideas, and suggestions please?
See details at:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1h0CQZ9wc46cb1Li7oKypqGBws_coOto3zQv3gpdV3LM/edit -
I suggest that, assuming that the purpose you have in mind is to research based on hypothetical electorates, that instead of positing STAR-style ballots and trying to transform them into strict-ranking ballots for comparison of voting systems, use instead a slightly different method, in which you would derive the ballots from a common origin.
A given case for study would start with a model electorate in which you would assume that each voter has a degree of affinity toward each candidate (I'm assuming you are only modeling single-winner elections). This affinity would be represented with a number in a range. You would normalize a given voter's affinities so as to assign if possible the most hateful number possible to at least one of the candidates and the most loving number possible to another. If a given voter has no spread, you might as well throw her vote out.
Then your attention forks to the voting systems under study. You assume for each system an algorithm to convert affinities to votes.
Sometimes a voting system shows limited interest in the voter's affinities. For example, what do you do if a voter's affinities toward the candidates are A:1 B:0 C:0 D:-1 but you are studying a voting system that requires strict ranking? The nearest possible votes are A>B>C>D and A>C>B>D. I think that among the best approaches you could take for simulation studies would be to use sufficiently large sample sizes so that you would expect random noise to cancel out, by and large, and choose randomly from among the closest votes but using a seeded random-number generator and starting with the seed as part of the givens at the outset.
