Hi Mike, On Mon, 2005-10-03 at 05:12 +0000, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote: > You said that you don't think that significantly many people would > favorite-bury in a public BeatpathWinner election. > > A voter will favorite-bury if, for that voter, the important goal is to keep > an unacceptable candidate from winning, and if favorite-burial will increase > the probability of accomplishing that.
I posit that very few voters will be in that predicament. It is my experience that most voters prefer candidates with a chance to win. People that like to be part of quixotic movements are exceedingly rare. That's why we've got our work cut out for us in the first place ;-) Moreover, the cases where sincere voting regret are rare. Combine that with the innate desire that I think people who vote contrarian ballots have to "make a statement", and I suspect we're talking about a diminishingly small number of people who will reverse order. Those that have strong enough believes to vote against the tide, and yet are fearful enough to reverse ordering on a ballot "just in case" I'll bet are rare. > > Because MDDA meets FBC and SFC, MDDA provides assurance to the voters who > otherwise would need to favorite-bury, and also to the voters who don't need > that assurance, and who, therefore, can benefit from the assurance that SFC > compliance gives. > > If it were up to me, public elections would use MDDA. I have to think about this more. For those who have lost track of the acronyms, here's what's being discussed: MDDA (Majority Defeat Disqualification Approval): http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Majority_Defeat_Disqualification_Approval SFC (Strategy-Free criterion): http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Strategy-Free_criterion and FBC (Favorite Betrayal criterion): http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Favorite_Betrayal_criterion In particular, I hadn't fully grokked SFC, and I'm still not sure I do. In particular, I'm trying to see how this: "If a Condorcet candidate exists, and if a majority prefers this candidate to another candidate, then the other candidate should not win if that majority votes sincerely and no other voter falsifies any preferences." .../always/ leads to this: "SFC requires that the majority of voters who prefer the Condorcet candidate to another particular candidate vote sincerely (neither falsify nor truncate their preferences), and it also requires that no other voter falsifies preferences" MDDA would seem to encourage truncation in rare situations. I don't yet have an example, but I think one could be devised based on the mechanics of the system. I agree that SFC is a very important criterion, if perhaps misnamed. I'm sure there were long discussions about naming it during the long period where I wasn't very active on the list. I was actually trying to arrive at this criteria, doing many searches for "Majority Winner" and so on, and was surprised to find SFC to be the name. This may be a seemingly minor quibble, but I raise this because I consider the two SFC quotes above to both be very important criteria, and I'm trying to figure out how both apply to MDDA. > Realistically, I > propose RV, with more rating-levels than Approval. Range is a political stillborn. This example kills it: 100 voters, two candidates, scale of 0-10: 90 voters: A=7, B=6 10 voters: A=0, B=10 A:630 B:640 B wins, even though 90% of voters prefer A to B. There is no possible way Range will ever get serious support, given that weakness. If it manages to pass constitutional muster, it goes against what I suspect is the instinct of most voters out there, including myself. I cannot be brought to recommend a system that suffers from such a glaring defect. Rob ---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
