Bart Ingles wrote:
>Realistic elections would have some variation in voter preference
>levels, which would tend to dampen out the strategy shifts like those
>described below. In other words, not all voters would be likely to
>shift strategy at the same time.
I might re-iterate the importance of how-to-vote cards in elections other
than simple plurality (the parties instruct their voters how to vote). The
majority of voters follow the how to vote cards, so a shift need only be
made by the party strategists.
>IRV has some bizarre strategies as well -- if there is any doubt about
>Nader's ability to defeat Bush, then the Nader voters should
>strategically rank Gore first. Unless of course they think that Gore is
>not much better than Bush, in which case they should threaten to bullet
>vote (or even to rank Gore below Bush) in an attempt to coerce the Gore
>voters into strategically ranking Nader first.
>
>Changing strategy in response to polling data is not unique to approval
>voting.
All true. However, assuming that most voters follow their party's
instructions, some problems in IRV are mitigated by preference swapping
deals, which generally help to minimise monotonicity violations.
