Hello folks, it is frequently claimed that methods which involve randomness may be fairer than other methods but will give "worse" results.
Here's evidence for just the contrary: A typical voting situation is 55%: A>C>B 45%: B>C>A with C being considered a good compromise by all voters (in the sense that all voters would definitely prefer C strongly to tossing a coin between A and B). At first, it seems that this is exactly the situation where methods which claim to maximize "social utility" or "social benefit" should lead to the "right" answer C. If all voters were sincere, indeed both Approval Voting and Range Voting will elect C, since the ballots would then look like this: Approval Voting: 55%: A,C 45%: B,C Winner: C Range Voting: 55%: A 100, C 50+whatever, B 0 45%: B 100, C 50+whatever, A 0 Winner: C The problem is, rational voters just *won't* vote sincere in this situation. And since Approval and Range Voting are *majoritarian* methods, the real outcome will rather look like this: Approval Voting: 55%: A 45%: B,C Winner: A Range Voting: 55%: A 100, C 0, B 0 45%: B 100, C 99, A 0 Winner: A So, both these methods *fail* to do just what they were apparently constructed to do! Now let us look how D2MAC performs in this typical situation, a democratic, non-majoritarian method: Recall that in D2MAC you specify a favourite and as many "also approved" options as you want. Then two ballots are drawn and the winner is the most approved option amoung those that are approved on both ballots (if such an option exists), or else the favourite option of the first ballot. If voters are sincere, the result will be this: 55%: favourite A, also approved C 45%: favourite B, also approved C Winner: C Can the A-faction improve their result upon this by voting differently? If they switch to 55%: favourite A, none also approved then A will win whenever an A-ballot is drawn first, i.e., with 55% probability. However, B will win in the remaining cases, i.e., with 45% probability. For the A-supporters, this "almost coin tossing" is not preferable to C, so the strategy won't help them. Thus, the "obvious" A-strategy cannot destroy the compromise under D2MAC! The only way the A-voters could have to strategically improve the result is to switch to something like this: 55-x%: favourite A, none also approved x%: favourite A, also approved C With a very small x, they can perhaps make sure that C ends up with a larger approval score than A so that the winning probabilities will turn out as about A: 55% B: 45/100 * 55/100 ~ 25% C: 45/100 * 45/100 ~ 20% This lottery may or may not be preferable to C for the A-voters. When C is really a good compromise which the A-voters still prefer to, say, the lottery 75%A + 25%B, then they will not use the above strategy. With larger x, the analysis is somewhat more complicated and will have to involve the possible strategic reactions by the B-voters. The result is that voting sincerely will happen and C will be the sure winner whenever (i) the A-voters prefer C to the lottery 77.5%A + 22.5%B, and (ii) the B-voters prefer C to the lottery 72.5%B + 27.5%A. In terms of individual utility scaled from 0 to 100, this means that (i) C must have a utility of at least 77.5 for the A-voters, and (ii) C must have a utility of at least 72.5 for the B-voters for C to be elected with certainty. In general, it can be shown that under D2MAC a good compromise will win with certainty as long as it is "good enough" in a sense similar to the above. Conclusion: it is not true that "efficiency" and "equality" are hard to bring together. To the contrary: D2MAC elects the good compromise C *because* it is democratic in the sense that it allows each voter to control and *trade* her share of the winning probability! Yours, Jobst ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
