On Jun 24, 2008, at 3:10 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
Or if A and B are the strongest candidates then maybe
strategically A=10, B=0, C=0.
In Approval the voter might vote A=1,
B=0, C=0. Or if B and C are the strongest candidates then maybe A=1,
B=1, C=0.
If it were me, I might be buying tickets out of the country. That
is *really* bad. *Sincere normalized rating, unmodified by election
probabilities, is almost zero.*
Voters with utilities like this, if they believe A doesn't have a
prayer, tend to not vote.
Note that the utilities of B and C were 123 and 99. I didn't anchor
the scale in any way but numbers around 100 could still be "above
average politician".
The sincere opinions/utilities A=543, B=123, C=99 were valid in all
the cases but typical voter behaviour in Range and Approval was to
normalize the vote and maybe to vote strategically depending on who
the strongest candidates are. The ratings given to the candidates
varied although the opinions/utilities stayed the same all the time.
This changing behaviour may sometimes lead to one of the candidates
being a spoiler.
Plurality, if voters vote sincerely, guarantees the spoiler effect.
It's part of the method. Range allows something different, but
nobody coerces voters. *Voters* can decide to act in ways that
mimic the spoiler effect, but it's not intrinsic to the method, and
if voters vote with any reasonable understanding at all, there is
no spoiler effect with any significant frequency with Range or
Approval.
How many voters in 2000 would not have known that Bush and Gore
were the frontrunners? The decision in Approval is quite simple: if
you want to influence the election, vote for one of the
frontrunners, period. Indeed, it gets tricky when there are three
frontrunners, but that is vanishingly rare in the U.S.
I think three frontrunners is not a very distant scenario. I also
think spoilers are quite possible in Range and Approval. Some spoiler
scenarios were already mentioned in this thread. You also already
replied to Chris Benham on the McCain-Obama-Clinton example in
another mail (and therefore I'll try to be brief here).
The Democrats would do wisely if they would not nominate the second
candidate as a "spoiler" even if the campaign would not be a mud
slinging campaign. And Clinton would do wisely (from the D party
point of view) if she would not accept a nomination by some other
party close to Democrats. And in a close election any candidate close
to Democrats would probably do wisely (from D point of view) if he/
she didn't join the race (since Republicans are more likely to rate
all Democrat resembling candidates at 0 than Democrat like voters
would rate all Democrat like candidates at max points).
Juho
___________________________________________________________
Now you can scan emails quickly with a reading pane. Get the new Yahoo! Mail. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html
----
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
