Choosing by means of approval-preferential voting. The path-revised approval choice

TL;DR

This paper introduces the path-revised approval choice, a new voting method combining approval and preferential data to improve decision quality while respecting Condorcet's principles.

Contribution

It proposes a novel voting procedure that integrates approval and preferential information using path scores, addressing limitations of existing methods.

Findings

The method satisfies several desirable voting properties.

It aligns with Condorcet's view that a clearly good option should prevail.

The approach enhances approval voting with preferential insights.

Abstract

Approval-preferential voting is problematical since it combines two different kinds of information that could by themselves lead to different choices. This article analyses the problem and studies a new proposal to deal with it. The existing methods are overviewed with special attention to several desirable properties that are not always met. Particular emphasis is made on certain rather unknown views of Condorcet about this subject. The proposed procedure definitely aims for a choice in the spirit of approval voting. However, it still makes use of the preferential information so as to improve the approval one. This is done by means of the path scores, in common to Schulze's method for preferential voting. The resulting method, that we call path-revised approval choice, is shown to enjoy several good properties. In particular, it fulfils in a well-defined sense Condorcet's latest view that a surely good option should prevail over a doubtfully best one.