As a citizen and voter, I don't want the election method to give gratuitous incentive to CAMPAIGN strategies which aim to confuse and entrap voters, e.g. thru introduction of incontestable fallacious poll data or of extra clones (pro or maybe con a given position).
But I do have a VOTING strategy. My strategy has me vote (or abstain) so as to maximize my expected overall satisfaction - call it 'utility'. Ingredients which enter into this utility include: how, apparently, my vote would most likely (or thereafter profitably) make a difference in picking the winner (instrumental effect); how my vote would most likely (or profitably) bear weight as an expression of sentiment; my costs in time and money to go and cast the vote; my regret and losses in self- or others' respect from not voting or from voting 'insincerely'; etc. I not only have a VOTING strategy: I am in fact ENTITLED to conceive and have and use such a strategy. Indeed I DEMAND that the election method give me scope for effective strategy. (A decent respect for democracy requires me to concede the same rights to other voters too.) As Mike pointed out, most of us - including me - have been energized into election reform because we resent being often forced to trade off two quite reasonable strategic goals: defensive - to defeat the worst alternative; and affirmative - to support our favorite. We know that this tragic trade-off is largely avoidable, through use of another method such as Approval in place of the prevalent Lone-Mark. It's bad enough being hobbled in the kind of strategy I can use. What's worse, though, is to be berated for - or prevented from - effectively strategizing at all. A totally non-'manipulable' (by me as voter) election - e.g., one where my choice has minimal effect (whether on account of someone else's prior choices, or gratuitous randomization, or a combination) - is of course of no civic interest or benefit to me. I must heartily second what Forest wrote so eloquently earlier today: '... Nurmi and Bartholdi are worried about voters "manipulating" the system to increase their expected utilities, i.e. to vote in their own best interest, as though voters' utilities had nothing to do with social utility. 'It is the prerogative of the voter to maximize their own utilities, whether anybody else thinks they have social value or not. That's democracy. We don't try to use voting methods to protect the public against the public will. We use voting methods to ascertain the public will. 'A more realistic worry is pollsters and pundits manipulating the voters by fooling them into voting against their own best interest. The more complicated the strategy and the more sensitive good strategy is to information ...the easier the "experts" can manipulate the vote of the gullible voter.' Joe Weinstein Long Beach, CA USA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp.
