At 04:42 PM 10/30/2006, Kevin Venzke wrote: >I wrote a simulation to measure the utility of zero-info Approval >strategy in zero-info Range elections.
Range Voting is designed to maximize overall utility to society, not *expected utility* for the individual voter. This study seems to replicate the common criticism of Range Voting, which is that voters may attempt to maximize their personal expected benefit by voting strategically, in this case by voting Approval style, with a particular strategy: >These results suggest to me that in the zero-info case, if there are >thought to be more than about 2 other voters, Range should be voted >as in Approval. This is utterly unsurprising. Venzke has simply confirmed the obvious. If you goal is to maximize your own *expected* satisfaction, and you don't value the collective satisfaction of the society, only your own, in a very narrow sense, the optimum strategy is Approval: i.e., >D. Zero-info Approval strategy. The voter gives a 10 to every candidate >at least as good as the average value of all candidates, and gives a >0 to the others. This is truly zero-info strategy. You don't have to have the foggiest notion of what everyone else thinks about the candidates. Useful to people who've been living in ... gosh, can't think of any place where media don't exist. Perhaps you have been on a round-the-world cruise on a balsa wood boat and your radio broke down. This imaginary voter has somehow managed to determine values for the candidates, *all of them*, while remaining utterly innocent of how everyone else feels. If the election of one of the candidates would cause a revolution, he hasn't got the foggiest idea. I find this assumption internally contradictory. It is thus a bit like the assumption that voters will vote strategically because (1) their sincere preference is A slightly preferred to B, and (2) they want A to win so much that they will distort the expression of their true preferences in order to defeat B. They both don't care much and care very much at the same time. And it is precisely this thinking which is behind this most common assertion that Range is "vulnerable to" or "encourages" strategic voting. Of course, the statement that the voter "should" vote Approval was made without stating the criteria which would determine how voters "should" vote. A Range election is designed to maximize collective value. If voters want to generate the greatest good for the greatest number, they will sincerely express what the election of each candidate means to *them*. If they, instead, effectively lie to the system in order to gain some expected extra personal benefit, they may gain a small increase in *expected* value, but with two costs: (1) they may lose value if their insincere vote results in the loss of their second favorite, for example, because they devalued this candidate in order to maximize their own favorite candidate's winning. and (2) they risk winning at the cost of collective dissatisfaction with the election, which can easily harm the "winners," in more than one way. For example, the various manipulations which the Republican Party has been alleged to have engaged in to distort the vote, over recent years, may result in a backlash. Had Bush actually been a "uniter, not a divider," this backlash would not have taken place. But I can say that I became far more determined, in my own political efforts, to ensure the election of Democrats, due to what happened in 2000. It was not about losing the election. I felt nothing like this with previous Republican victories. I'd say that the Republican Party won the short-term but, as a result, may be losing the long-term. We'll see, of course. I have no crystal ball. (This is not intended to start a political discussion. It is just my own point of view, as an example of how winning, at the cost of maximizing social satisfaction with the result, can backfire. This applies to Democrats who cheat or otherwise take advantage of weaknesses in the electoral system as well as to Republicans. And it applies in other election environments than that of the U.S.) I think we need to be very careful about assuming that voters will commonly distort their votes in an attempt to manipulate the system to produce the election of their favorite. This is tantamount to lying to your benefactor about what you want, in order to maximize the possibility that your benefactor will give you your favorite instead of something almost as satisfactory. Children will do this.... and, over time, they learn that is not a great idea. Then it is argued that such activity on the part of the voter harms those who voted sincerely and who were innocent of such distortion. Yet when I look at the examples proposed, they show that the sincere voters got quite a reasonable result. Just not, necessarily, their absolute favorite. And the strategic voters, in this case, also got what they want. The idea that this is a defect in Range is caused by continued and often unexamined assumptions that voting systems are supposed to elect the pairwise favorite, the Condorcet winner, if one exists. This, again, is rooted in an utter neglect of preference strength, because the Condorcet winner could be far from being the winner who will maximize benefit. I have given examples showing how very bad choices can be made by assuming that a whim is equivalent to a strong preference. Since these analysts presume that the pairwise ranking winner should win, they think of strategic voting as "bad," and "not to be rewarded." It is old thinking. The strategic voter -- which in this context means a voter who lies about true preferences in order to gain some immediate advantage -- may somewhat increase his immediate satisfaction by bullet-voting or Approval style voting, with some strategy as was described -- but only when large numbers of other voters don't have a strong preference regarding the pairwise election in question. Basically, if you care enough to lie to the system, well, you care enough to outweigh the mild preferences of other voters and your alleged mild preference wasn't. The paradox behind this, I don't think has been noticed by other writers before. I'd appreciate comment on it, particularly from Mr. Smith, the Range Voting expert. I think that real Range data from real Range elections will show that this alleged "defect" of Range Voting does not exist, or, more accurately, that it does little or no harm. If the majority allegedly deprived of their allegedly rightful victory -- by the election of their second favorite due to "betrayal" by the strategic voters -- really care about this, if it is a serious loss to them, well, then, it is also true that their alleged mild preference was really stronger than stated in all these scenarios. ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
