Date: Sat, 22 May 2004 23:26:40 -0500 (EST)
From: Adam H Tarr <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
... My first guess at a strategy:
1) Identify the two frontrunners, and pick your favorite among them.
2) Give your favorite frontrunner a 10, your less favored frontrunner a 0, and everyone else a 5.
This maximizes your impact on the important contest - the one between the frontrunners.
Adam,
That certainly makes sense if only two candidates have a significant chance of winning. But in general, why limit it to two front-runners? What if there are 5 candidates who are likely to win (you may not know which is more likely), and 5 other candidates who are just jokers doing a publicity stunt? Clearly, it would be advantageous to vote in such a way that the jokers have no effect on the election. (The vote counting procedure could be modified so that simply abstaining on some candidates has this effect.) But would you have any incentive to rate the "real" candidates insincerely?
If you're voting strategy is based on who you think is or is not likely to win, that suggests an IR-type approach, such as Brian Olson's "Instant Runoff Normalized Ratings" (IRNR),
http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2004-May/012885.html
The basic idea is to normalize the ratings, disqualify the candidate with the lowest average rating, and repeat until there's only one left. Is there a way to beat the system (strategically) with this method?
Ken Johnson
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