2007/8/15, Dave Ketchum: > > On most elections many, if not most, voters' preference will be a single > candidate. Why is this something to fight? > One candidate can overshadow the competition. > Voters can be loyal to their party.
For occasional exception elections there will be more interest in voting > for multiple candidates, and it is DESIRABLE to support this voting for > whichever elections may inspire voter interest in such. > > Fighting complications that make the rules for deciding on winners hard to > > understand make such complications undesirable unless they provide major > benefits. > > DWK > > Your viewpoint is biased to two-party system. In multi-party democracies, like Brazil, your assumption is likely wrong. No one-round voting system is able to differentiate them. I'll try to illustrate it. Suppose an election which three candidates (Bush, Gore, Nader) runs. These are the real preferences of the voters: 47: Bush >> Gore > Nader 33: Gore >> Nader > Bush 10: Gore > Nader >> Bush 10: Nader > Gore >> Bush Under honest approval voting, Gore receives 53 approvals, Bush 43 and Nader 20. Gore wins. It looks fair to me. However, note that Nader voters voted honestly because they were sure that Nader is not likely to win. Instead of, if is not known the winner of a pairwise comparison between Gore and Nader, there is incentive for bullet voting. This is the reason of Bucklin is no longer used in US. 47: Bush >> Gore > Nader 27: Gore > Nader >> Bush (honest); Gore >> Nader > Bush (strategic) 26: Nader > Gore >> Buch (honest); Nader >> Gore > Bush (strategic) Bush wins the first rount, but loses for Gore in a runoff (IAR). With strategic voting, the spoiler effect is possible under simple approval. ________________________________ Diego Santos Aluno de Ciência da Computação Integrante do projeto Wireless(Petrobras/DEE-UFCG)
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