At 03:00 AM 3/13/2007, Juho wrote: >I guess you, as a Range expert, pretty well know what the anticipated >problematic scenarios are. Problems may arise e.g. when opinion polls >tell that Democrats would get only 49% of the votes (against 51% of >the Republicans) and therefore their supporters decide to put some >additional weight in their votes and vote strategically in Approval >style. This would make the Democrats win.
Why? I really think this should be realized: I expect, at least initially, major party supporters to vote under Approval exactly the same as they currently vote under Plurality. Almost all will bullet vote. In the election scenario, though, suppose it is Approval (the arguments are quite the same with Range). If the Dems have 49 percent of the votes, then we could surmise that they will all vote only for the Dem. And we would likewise surmise that the Repubs will vote only for the Repub. Why would any of them approve both the Dem and the Repub? (Likewise, in an election with strong top-two candidates, say Dem and Repub, we can expect that most voters will vote 0 for one and 100 for another. It is third party supporters and independents who will vote intermediate votes. And not room was allowed for them in the 49-51 scenario.) >It is possible that Republicans would counter by applying the same >strategy and the situation gets balanced again. Possible? *Why would one expect anything else*? Party partisans will, presumably, bullet-vote. They may, some of them, add additional approvals or range ratings, but not where it could shift the election, and these extra votes are moot, they have no effect on the outcome. It is what happens with *other voters* that is interesting. Range and Approval allow third party voters to participate fully in the pairwise election between the top two, if they want to do so. If they really believe in "Tweedledum and Tweedledee," they aren't forced to do so.... Participating fully means voting Approval style. In Range as well as in Approval. I'm claiming that these scenarios of Range allegedly producing bad results because of "strategic voting" are, essentially, nonsense. The example here doesn't even look at the actual behavior, it just asserts that it is a problem. And it is not. Other examples depend on the idea that Approval style voting is somehow inferior or undesirable. It is an expression of strong preference. If you have a strong preference, express it! If you don't care that much, why, then, you can express a weak preference, but don't come crying if the election method discounts your weak preference. That is exactly what it is designed to do. Consider it, but not as much as a strong preference. This is the whole point of considering preference strength! > But as a result of >this race on "whose voters are more strategic" You can't get more strategic than Approval. If you care, vote that way. What is imagined here is that a political party has the voters in its pocket, so that they automatically will vote as the party tells them to vote. But this is not the real world of elections. > Range elections may >become in essence Approval elections. I don't know how many times this nonsense has been repeated. "Range becomes Approval." No, Range will *never* become Approval unless you can somehow get all the voters to not express intermediate ratings. Range *allows* voters the freedom to express intermediate rankings and, we could argue, it is strategically optimal for them to do so. The idea that it is not depends upon a contradiction in terms. That is, a weak preference that is strong enough that I'll exaggerate it. The limit of this insanity would be "I don't care if A or B wins the election, they are both equally good, but I prefer A to B so I'll bullet vote for A." >The achieved results of >Approval voting are not very bad in terms of achieved social utility. >The worst scenarios are ones where some parties/groupings vote in >Approval style while others do not. In these cases it seems obvious >that the social utility would not be good. It is not obvious at all. ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
