At 08:03 PM 3/7/2007, Scott Ritchie wrote: >On Wed, 2007-03-07 at 13:41 -0500, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: > > > If we consider the underlying preferences and ratings to be > > expressable in Range, then we can consider that the sincere voter > > sets -- or can be seen as setting -- an Approval cutoff rating, and > > all candidates rated above that level are approved and all below it > > are not. Essentially, the voter has divided the candidates into two > > sets, and the vote is sincere if every candidate in the approved set > > is preferred to every candidate in the disapproved set. > > > > There is no known good reason for voting insincerely under Approval. > > It is never forced. > >This definition bothers me a bit.
I can sympathize. > We tend to think of "sincere" votes >as non-strategic, but the method you just described for "voting >sincerely" can involve a whole lot of strategy based around resizing the >sets and setting the approval threshold. If the underlying ratings are accurate, in my view, a sincere voter does not become insincere through the setting of an approval cutoff at any level. While this could be called "strategic," and it certainly would change with knowledge of the general condition of society, it could only be "insincere" in a technical sense that assumes insincerity if a vote is altered based on what the voter thinks might fly. Placing the Approval cutoff is a *judgement* that the voter makes. The *sincere* judgement would be based on "Given what I know about possibilities, what am I willing to accept." If we ask the raw question of the voter, if wishes could be horses, what would you accept or "approve," a voter might simply select the favorite and any candidate absolutely equal to this. But that is not what we are seeking. We are seeking, in Approval, for the voter to set a "compromise" cutoff. It is as if there were two elections: in one voters sincerely rate candidates. There still is a similar problem, but the essence of sincere rating is that the numbers reflect the preference strengths of the voter, not some judgement of what will succeed. If you think that Joe will make a fabulous President, the best possible, in sincere ratings you would have Joe at the top. If you think that someone else would be excellent, but not as good as Joe, then you would rate this other person highly, but lower than Joe. You would not take into consideration that lowering that rating could cause the second person to lose to a less desired candidate. Rather, you would simply rate candidates according to your estimation of their value in the office. If you prefer one candidate to another, but the preference is very slight, less than the resolution of the Range election, you might rate them identically, it would not be insincere. Then there is the second election: what is the Approval cutoff? In this election I must consider what I think attainable. The fact is that I'd make a better choice in this regard if I have the results of the Range election first. Setting the Approval cutoff is a more difficult decision to make "accurately" than rating the candidates, I expect. But most voters simply won't make it that complicated. As I've frequently mentioned, I'd expect, unless the candidate field broadens significantly over present practice, most voters will simply vote for their favorite, which will be one of two frontrunners. A few voters will have a favorite who is not a frontrunner, and these will, as suggested, vote for their favorite and the frontrunner they prefer. And maybe for more than that, depends. But if there are more than two frontrunners, more than two in reach of winning the election, it could get quite complicated.... So, the good news is that coming up with a set of sincere ratings should not be terribly difficult (as long as we don't insist that they be nailed down precisely). I'd probably start with a ranking, because pairwise comparison is easier. I doubt that I'd get caught in a Condorcet cycle! Then I would set my least favorite at zero and my favorite at max and then work in between. Theoretically, I don't have to use the extremes, but if I consider that my vote should count equally with others, I would. But to vote Approval requires an additional, substantially more complicated step if I want to do it precisely with a large number of candidates. I must set the approval cutoff. This is not dependent solely upon candidate preferences and ratings. Rather, it is dependent upon what compromises I'm willing to accept. If I approve a candidate who I'm actually not willing to accept, I'd leave the country if he wins, I'd call that insincere. And if I disapprove of a candidate whom I'd actually be pleased to have win, I'd similarly call that insincere. But there is a lot of room between these two rocks. I don't see any forced insincerity in Approval. It might look like that because of confusion between the two separate decisions. One test would be, if A is presented for ratification of his election, would I vote for or against A? I'd call a "fully" sincere Approval vote a vote on this question. And, in fact, Approval has been described that way. But that is fairly demanding of compromise, because the pain of the election failing might be worse than the pain of an even fairly bad winner. This is equivalent to having NOTA on the ballot, and approving of any candidate one would prefer to NOTA. Libertarians might have a very simple ballot to fill out! >We're not doing that though. We're both acting very strategically here >based on information about other voters to influence the election >outcome, and at least one of us is changing our vote as a result. That >fits just about any reasonable definition of "strategic voting" yet >you're calling us both sincere. Some reserve "strategic voting" for voting where one reverses preferences to gain strategic effect. We could call that "fully insincere." Approval never requires full insincerity, nor does Range. I gave a definition above for full sincerity in Approval. Full sincerity in Range isn't so difficult. In Range and Approval, full sincerity may be strategically suboptimal, that is, the voter may be able to improve expected outcome by, for example, not Approving of a candidate that the voter would actually accept. In an election between Bush Sr. and Clinton, I would, in fact, accept either. But this does not mean that I would vote for Bush Sr. I didn't, and not just because voting for both would have invalidated my ballot. The fact is that the real election was between the two. With two candidates, Approval cutoff is pretty easy to set! You just approve your favorite. Because if you really didn't care, you could accomplish the same "not care" effect by not voting at all. Rather, remember, the goal of voting is to use aggregated preference to select the ideal winner. So if I have a preference, I should express it. Does this mean that the method should allow me to express all preferences? Not necessarily. Election methods are an attempt to compress deliberative process into a single poll. Approval compresses the process in a certain way, as I've noted, it asks two questions, the answer to the first being concealed and not directly expressed, it is only input to the second question. ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
