> WDS: Specifically, it is NOT possible to determine your strategically-optimal > range vote > working without any information about what the other voters are doing.
>Eric Gorr: Yes, it is. Simply decide who you wouldn't mind seeing as the winner and give them the highest possible ranking. Everyone else, give them the lowest possible ranking. No information about what other voters are doing is needed. REPLY BY WARREN SMITH: I was right and you are wrong. Here is a counterexample. Let the other voters create a tie for first among A and B, *or* a tie among B and C, you do not know which. If the former (and your preference is A>B>C) then your best range vote is A=max, B=C=min. If the latter, then your best range vote is A=B=max, C=min. Gorr's method is at least 50% worse than my method, and possibly 100% worse. The fact that at least two people on the EM list are capable of not understanding this, perhaps explains why it is, that so many real world voters experimentally are non-strategic. It also suggests that in a system where undertanading best strategy really *is* difficult (e.g. IRV, sophisticated Condorcet) that god only knows what real world voters are going to do, but for sure, adopting the best strategy always, is not going to be it. wds ---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
