Electoral System to Elect a Moderate Committee Chair

[Brian Langstraat]

Range Voting (RV) tends to elect moderate candidates, but with strategic voters (max/min scores) tends to become Approval Voting (AV).

AV tends to elect moderate candidates, but with strategic partisan voters (single vote) tends to become First-Past-The-Post (FPTP).

FPTP tends to elect partisan (sometimes extremist) candidates.

Thus, RV with strategic partisan voters tends to elect partisan (sometimes extremist) candidates. [See Link below]

RV would often elect partisan/extremist candidates, since strategic partisan voters often sufficiently out number moderate voters in real elections.

A committee vote would usually elect a partisan/extremist chair, since committee members are usually strategic and partisan.

A public vote would often elect a partisan/extremist committee chair, since voters are often strategic and partisan.

"Best voting system to elect Prime Minister or Speaker of the House?" discusses methods to elect a moderate committee chair (house speaker) when only committee members vote.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/electionscience/DJJQ2a0q9GY

I suggested that the following AV method may be a simple way to elect an acceptable moderate leader for a legislative body:

Each legislator must vote to approve more than half of the legislators.

The legislator with the the most approvals is the leader.

The AV (>1/2) method has a fatal flaw when the majority party uses extreme collusion to precisely spread out every party member's approval, but only 2 defective party members would correct this fatal flaw.

The AV (>1/2) method should elect a moderate committee chair in public elections, since majority parties should not be able to precisely spread out voter's approval, even with strategic partisan voters.

For example, the AV (>1/2) method should elect a moderate city council member to be mayor with public elections.

Disappointingly, the AV (>1/2) method would not work well for general elections, since it is dependent on a set number of candidates which is very susceptible to candidate cloning (like Borda Count).

What are the potential issues with using AV (>1/2) to elect a moderate committee chair in public elections?

Link:

http://ncase.me/ballot/sandbox?m=%7B%22s%22%3A%22Approval%22%2C%22v%22%3A%5B%5B152%2C31%5D%2C%5B55%2C232%5D%2C%5B235%2C238%5D%5D%2C%22c%22%3A%5B%5B149%2C151%5D%2C%5B151%2C29%5D%2C%5B237%2C239%5D%2C%5B57%2C231%5D%5D%2C%22d%22%3A%22%5Btype%20a%20description%20for%20your%20model%20here.%20for%20example...%5D%5Cn%5CnLook%2C%20it's%20the%20whole%20shape%20gang!%20Steven%20Square%2C%20Tracy%20Triangle%2C%20Henry%20Hexagon%2C%20Percival%20Pentagon%2C%20and%20last%20but%20not%20least%2C%20Bob.%22%7D