At 05:47 AM 1/21/2007, Chris Benham wrote: >Warren Smith wrote: > >>--no. The definition in the problem statement said "slight" >>preferences among clones. >>By slight, I meant, to be formal, infinitesimal. > >Right. And how does a voter express an "infinitesimal" preference >in the Range 0-99 that you advocate?
They don't. Benham is so fixated on ranked voting that he consistently overlooks the implications of what is written about Range. "Slight" preference would properly refer to preference strength below the resolution of the Range method. This makes sense when Range is expressive to a degree that the expressable preference strengths are probably beyond what people can sensibly discriminate. As I've written, as have others, 0-9 or 10 is actually pushing it. 0-99 or 100 is pretty clearly beyond necessity. "Slight" preference would thus mean preference that exists, perhaps, but which is less than the resolution on the ballot. And then the question becomes, "How much resolution should the ballot provide?" There is a cost to increased resolution, and it would appear that beyond a certain point, there is little or no return in value. If we assume that voters will rank Clones identically, then Range satisfies ICC. As we examined in a previous post, the technical definition of "clone" is based on an assumption of ranks, i.e., a clone is a candidate whom no voter ranks differently than another candidate or other candidates. The definition clearly wasn't written to apply to Range, it was written in the context of comparing ranked methods. The point is that Range does not provide a benefit to parties to introduce clones, unlike some methods, nor does the introduction of clones have any anticipable effect in causing members of a clone set to lose. Theoretically, clones under Range would tie. But generally noise would prevent that. *We don't care which clone is elected, if we did, they would not be clones.* ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
