This discussion doesn't belong on debian-policy. The policy maintainers have no authority over Debian's voting procedure, which is codified in the Debian constitution.
On Sat, May 26, 2007 at 05:19:26PM -0700, CLAY S wrote: > >Warren Smith's copious arguments to the contrary, it's not entirely > >clear that Range Voting is superior to or even simpler than > >concordecet voting. > According the social utility efficiency figures, it is substantially better > - in all 720 different combinations of the 5 "knobs" he chose to tweak; from > 0% strategy, to 100% strategic voters, few candidates, to many candidates, > ignorant voters or informed voters. And Condorcet suffers much worse from > strategic voting - especially considering things like the DH3 pathology. > Range Voting handles strategic voting quite gracefully, such that its large > advantage over Condorcet voting actually _increases_ with a more strategic > electorate. This comparison assumes that voters would behave the same regardless of which system is in use. That's not a reasonable assumption, because *Range Voting rewards attempts at strategic voting and Condorcet punishes it*. Your so-called "DH3 pathology" is not a bug, it's a feature. There are lots of people dumb enough to try to vote strategically even when Condorcet is being used. I don't think we have that problem in Debian, but if we did, it would still be a problem of people being stupid, not a problem of the voting method being used. On the average, an individual voter with no reliable knowledge of how the rest of the electorate is voting will hurt his own interests by voting strategically under Condorcet, which means the best strategy is to vote honestly. OTOH, when Range Voting is used, it is *reasonable* for each voter to assume that all the other voters will vote strategically, and under those circumstances it's beneficial for that voter to also vote strategically. http://rangevoting.org/vsi.html itself makes it clear that honest voting in Condorcet performs better than strategic Range Voting. The subtlety may be beyond the grasp of the American electorate at large, but I don't see why you think it's a problem for Debian. > In some sense it does come down to personal preference as to what people > "perceive" to be simple; but in any case, I don't think that its worth it to > sacrifice the quality of the candidates elected in order to make an election > _marginally_ simpler. Well, I agree with you there; and therefore I don't see any reason why Debian should switch. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
