At 12:23 AM 8/30/2007, Paul Kislanko wrote: >If I understand the meaning of the original example correctly, the answer is >Asset voting. > >Give every voter 100 points. By the conditions given, both the A and B >voters think C is 80% as good as their true favorite, so give 5/9 of their >points to their favorite and 4/9 to C. > >A's total is 55 x 5/9 = 275/9 >B's total is 45 x 5/9 = 225/9 >C's total is 55 x 4/9 + 45 x 4/9 = 100 x 4/9 = 400/9 so C wins.
Mr. Kislanko misunderstood the conditions of the problem. One of the conditions was that the voters were selfish. What is to stop tha A voters from giving all their points to A? Range handles the problem quite well if voters vote sincerely. But the A voters, voting sincerely, are voting against their own interests. That's the problem. If they are "selfish," they will simply elect A. I dislike, by the way, describing voters as selfish if they vote in their own interest. That's the default, they *should* vote in their own interest. What I ended up suggesting was that the problem is resolved if the voters negotiate. It's possible to set up transfers of value (money?) such that the utilities are equalized, and that the benefit of selecting C is thus distributed such that the A voters do *not* lose by voting for C. If they vote for A, they get A but no compensation. If they vote for C, they get C plus compensation. If the utilities were accurate -- Juho claimed that they were *not* utilities, but that then makes the problem incomprehensible in real terms -- then overall satisfication is probably optimized by the choice of C with compensation to the A voters, coming from the C voters. Certainly the reverse is possible, that is, the A voters could pay the C voters compensation to elect A, but it would have to be much higher compensation! ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info