> raphfrk at netscape.net >What about using the following for the electoral college. >A State can split itself into sub-States as long as all sub-States have >a population larger than the smallest State
- this is all a bad idea since it makes the presidential election subject to gerrymandering. The present EC system is bad but at least it cannot be gerrymandered. > IRV with candidate withdrawal (F Simmons) - WDS: My preliminary computer simulation includes this. The preliminary result was that in 3-candidate IRV elections, allowing the runner-up to retroactively withdraw from the race improves IRV's Bayesian regret, and in the 1-dimensional scenarios in my sim, it turned out the Condorcet winner always resulted from this procedure if the guy withdrew whenever (by so doing) he could make the winner closer to him on the 1D line. However, keep in mind this claim is preliminary. It perhaps can now be proven as a theorem (now that the computer+me noticed it) in 1D "singlepeaked" scenarios with 3 candidates. >Burr dilemma problem with approval voting pointed out by Nagel and used >by Rob Richie to attack Approval voting: >The key slide from Nagel's presentation: >Statement of the Burr Dilemma >When three or more candidates compete for an office that only one can win, and voters (V) may support two (or more) of them by casting equal (approval) votes, candidates (C1 and C2) seeking support from the same group (G) of voters will maximize their respective votes if all members of G vote for both C1 and C2. Both candidates thus have an incentive to appeal for shared support. However, if such appeals succeed completely and neither candidate receives votes from members of V-G, the outcome will be at best a tie in which neither C1 nor C2 is assured of victory. Each candidate therefore has an incentive to encourage some members of G to vote only for himself or herself. If both C1 and C2 successfully follow such a strategy, either or both may receive fewer votes than some other candidate C3 supported by members of V-G. The risk that both C1 and C2 will lose is exacerbated if a retaliatory spiral increases the number of single votes cast by members of G. At the limit, such retribution reduces approval voting to conventional single-vote balloting among the members of G or, if the problem is endemic, among all voters. The nearer that limit is approached, the lower the probability that advantages claimed for approval voting will be realized.. --WDS RESPONSE: I think Nagel has a valid point. You might have thought Approval voting was immune to "candidate cloning." However, due to these strategic-voting "retaliatory spiral" effects that actually is not so in real life. Therefore, "vote splitting" effects can still occur in approval voting, contrary to advertising. However in range voting, voters can still vote, say, C1=99, C2=97 thus expressing a slight preference without hurting the C1,C2 candidate set too much. So, in practice we can expect that range voting would alleviate this Burr-dilemma problem with approval voting pointed out by Nagel. So that seems to be another advantage of range over approval. Oho, I see Anthony O'Neal had a similar response. Clearly the man is a genius, he should join the Center for Range Voting, http://www.rangevoting.org . --Warren Smith ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
