At 4:46 PM -0500 3/15/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >So my questions are, given the many different possible numbers >and varieties of candidates in different elections, combined with >the varying concerns different voters will have about different >candidates, how often are voters likely to use a burying strategy, >and how easy will it usually be -- even for voters who really excel >at strategic thinking (undoubtedly a very small percentage) -- to >decide that burying is a good strategy and how deep a particular >candidate should be buried? In short, how big a factor is strategic >burying ever really likely to be?
My conjecture (based on extrapolation from smallish ranked-preference elections that I've helped run) is that 1) you're entirely right that most voters aren't going to be very good at strategic thinking, but that 2) they're going to engage in (bad) strategic thinking, and voting, anyway. I recommend spending some time at the blackjack tables for a confirmation of this kind of thing. (Learn basic blackjack odds, which give you an expected return of about 98%, so the process doesn't get too expensive.) It seems like every player has a system, and most of them (even most of them that get published in how-to books) are deeply silly. What we want, it seems to me, is to be able to persuade the voter to vote sincerely, and to do so honestly. The problem with burying is that it's a both simple and relatively obvious, and in particular elections might become widespread. The problem is that claims like "almost all real-world IRV election will choose the Condorcet winner", or "voters in real-world Condorcet elections won't vote strategically" are close to impossible to demonstrate to someone who's skeptical of one claim or the other--or both. I worry more about insincere/strategic voting because I'm convinced that most people are prone to act that way, especially in emotional high-stakes elections, but if you don't share my worry, I doubt that I can convince you. I tend to worry less about IRV because I think the IRV winner is generally justifiable even in the (apparently unlikely) event that s/he isn't the Condorcet winner. I'm no doubt biased, in that my interests lie more in multiple-winner STV elections, where the Condorcet winner doesn't figure. Also, I see either IRV or Condorcet methods as so much better than the alternatives that we shouldn't overstate the defects of either one, compared to the much greater defects of (especially) simple plurality elections. -- /Jonathan Lundell. ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
