ABC rules

Approval-based committee rules (ABC rules) are voting methods for selecting a committee, i.e., a fixed-size subset of candidates. ABC rules are also known as approval-based multi-winner rules. The input of such rules are approval ballots. We recommend the book Multi-Winner Voting with Approval Preferences [1] by Lackner and Skowron as a detailed introduction to ABC rules and related research directions. In addition, the survey by Faliszewski et al. [2] is useful as a more general introduction to committee voting (not limited to approval ballots).

The main ABC rules implemented in abcvoting are the following:

>>> for rule_id in abcrules.MAIN_RULE_IDS:
...     print(f"{rule_id:40s}{abcrules.get_rule(rule_id).longname}")
av                                      Approval Voting (AV)
sav                                     Satisfaction Approval Voting (SAV)
pav                                     Proportional Approval Voting (PAV)
slav                                    Sainte-Laguë Approval Voting (SLAV)
cc                                      Approval Chamberlin-Courant (CC)
lexcc                                   Lexicographic Chamberlin-Courant (lex-CC)
geom2                                   2-Geometric Rule
seqpav                                  Sequential Proportional Approval Voting (seq-PAV)
revseqpav                               Reverse Sequential Proportional Approval Voting (revseq-PAV)
seqslav                                 Sequential Sainte-Laguë Approval Voting (seq-SLAV)
seqcc                                   Sequential Approval Chamberlin-Courant (seq-CC)
seqphragmen                             Phragmén's Sequential Rule (seq-Phragmén)
minimaxphragmen                         Phragmén's Minimax Rule (minimax-Phragmén)
leximaxphragmen                         Phragmén's Leximax Rule (leximax-Phragmén)
maximin-support                         Maximin Support Method (MMS)
monroe                                  Monroe's Approval Rule (Monroe)
greedy-monroe                           Greedy Monroe
minimaxav                               Minimax Approval Voting (MAV)
lexminimaxav                            Lexicographic Minimax Approval Voting (lex-MAV)
equal-shares                            Method of Equal Shares (aka Rule X) with Phragmén phase
equal-shares-with-av-completion         Method of Equal Shares (aka Rule X) with AV completion
equal-shares-with-increment-completion  Method of Equal Shares (aka Rule X) with increment completion
phragmen-enestroem                      Method of Phragmén-Eneström
consensus-rule                          Consensus Rule
trivial                                 Trivial Rule
rsd                                     Random Serial Dictator
eph                                     E Pluribus Hugo (EPH)

The short identifiers on the left side are the respective rule_id’s.

In addition to these rules, there are Thiele methods, Sequential Thiele methods, and Reverse Sequential Thiele methods. These are classes of ABC rules and are parameterized by arbitary scoring functions (explained in detail here [1]). For example, the 3-Geomtric Thiele method (with rule_id being “geom3”) as well as Sequential 3-Geometric (rule_id=”seqgeom3”) and Reverse Sequential 3-Geometric (rule_id=”revseqgeom3”) are implemented but not specifically listed above.

>>> for rule_id in ["geom3", "seqgeom3", "revseqgeom3"]:
...     print(f"{rule_id:20s}{abcrules.get_rule(rule_id).longname}")
geom3               3-Geometric Rule
seqgeom3            Sequential 3-Geometric Rule
revseqgeom3         Reverse Sequential 3-Geometric Rule