Warren Smith wrote:
>First: >A theorem ( http://rangevoting.org/AppCW.html ) >indicates that range and approval voting both return the honest-voter Condorcet >winner if all voters act strategically. Basically, if we are not in >the "prettiest cloud" but rather in the "I love/hate Nixon" emotional mode, >then we vote max or min on Nixon. Assuming all voters do that with >their threshold placed somewhere between the two candidates they judge as most >likely to win, >(which they do because they are not strategic idiots) >and assuming one of these two happens to be the honest-voter Condorcet winner, >then >theorem: Range & Approval both will elect the honest-voter Condorcet winner, >but meanwhile >Condorcet methods often will fail to do so. [Juho Laatu claims misleadingly >that "RV may still elect the Condorcet winner with quite good probability >(but only with probability)." Actually, under these assumptions, the >probability is 1. >Further, Condorcet methods with strategic voters will elect the honest-CW with >merely a probability strictly below 1.] > I can't see that this set of assumptions is really that much different from those needed to say that FPP will certainly elect the sincere CW. [And I can't see anything remotely "misleading" about Juho's statement]. >Second: >The claim that "honest" Range Voters can have their votes >outweighed by large factors by strategic ones, is correct. However, >(1) at least their honest >vote will never actually work against them (e.g. compared to not voting at all) > The chance of that happening in practice is very small, I'd say insignificant if the Condorcet method meets mono-raise (like Schulze and DMC and most others). Those methods also allow equal-ranking at the top, so voters in fear of being bitten by Participation failure can avoid it by submitting approval votes. >(2) their honest statement "X is my favorite" in their vote, will never hurt >them. > You mean their honest statement "X is *one* of my favourites (plural)" will never hurt them (assuming you mean "hurt them in comparison to some other way of voting"). >..consider a Condorcet election. Gore loses to Bush thanks to a Nader spoiler >effect. The Nader voters complain "the voting system penalized us for >honestly ordering >Nader top, Gore second. If we had had range voting we could have expressed our >honest ordering, without being penalized." > If the election is close enough in comparison to the number of available slots on the range ballot, then the Nader voters can of course still be penalised "for honestly ordering Nader top, Gore second". >Second: >The claim that "honest" Range Voters can have their votes >outweighed by large factors by strategic ones, is correct. However,.. > >Anyhow such outweighing > > >(b) is entirely their own fault and hence is self-correcting over time and not >a >valid attack on the voting system. > > > I reject the idea that voting honestly is a "fault". The voting system should try to minimise the advantage of strategists over sincere voters, and of informed strategists over less well informed and zero-info. strategists. It should give the voter a clear way of voting sincerely, and if there is a zero-info. strategy it should be straight-forward and similar to sincere voting. A minimum standard is that the voting method should give good results in the zero-info. case with strategic voters. Say sincere ratings are: 48: A10>B4>C0 47: B10>C6>A0 04: C10>B4>A0 B is the Condorcet and big sincere ratings winner, but if these voters all use the best 0-info. Range/Approval strategy C the sincere ratings loser (SU worst) wins. Chris Benham ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
