At 01:52 AM 11/26/2008, Jonathan Lundell wrote:
On Nov 25, 2008, at 8:45 PM, Kevin Venzke wrote:
--- En date de : Mar 25.11.08, Abd ul-Rahman
Lomax <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > a écrit :
What Approval sincerely represents from a voter is a
*decision* as to where to place an Approval cutoff.
But is it not true that what *all* methods sincerely represent from a
voter are the decisions related to voting under that method?
If a decision makes sense in a given context, then that is a sincere
decision. Is that not your stance?
It shouldn't be. "Sincere" is a term of art in this context, not a
value judgement. An insincere vote is simply one that does not
represent the preference of the voter if the voter were a dictator.
There's nothing *wrong* with voting insincerely (or, equivalently,
strategically), in this sense; a voter has a right to do their best to
achieve an optimum result in a particular context. ----
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
That is more or less correct, except that
"sincere" may refer to any vote that doesn't
reverse preference. Again, Mr. Lundell is right,
there is nothing wrong with voting in a manner
that is intended to improve the outcome as the
voter sees it. A decent method will not be
*seriously* harmed by this behavior. A poor method may actually be improved.
This should be explored explicitly.
With poor voting systems, strategic voting not
only improves the outcome for the individual
voter, but it also may improve it for the overall
society. Consider Florida 2000. Many of us might
think that the outcome would have been better if
the Nader supporters had voted "strategically."
Plurality needs that kind of help to find a
compromise winner better than the first
preference winner. So might IRV -- though it
needs it less. Favorite Betrayal is a means
whereby some voters in IRV, by voting
insincerely, can improve the overall outcome for a majority of voters.
But when a system is really good, like Range,
strategic voting impairs the ability of the
system to find the optimal winner. However, the
failure isn't catastrophic, because the Range
Votes still preserve preference order; they are
essentially Approval votes. So "strategic Range"
degrades to Approval, not to some major failure.
Approval, likewise, degrades to Plurality under
some circumstances, but these would be poor
strategy, applied by too many voters.
(The majority of voters under Approval, in most
elections, may bullet vote, it's sincere and if
it is for a frontrunner, it's optimal or
almost-optimal. It is only a few voters who need
to add additional approvals. Under some
definitions of sincere voting -- the ones used by
critics of Approval, these are possibly
"insincere" because the voter is suppressing
their preference, the minor candidate who can't
win, in order to cast a vote in the meaningful
election, i.e., the only pairwise election --
normally -- where a vote has a chance of being
other than moot. But I wouldn't call those votes
insincere, they merely do not express a
preference in a candidate pair, but sincerely
express preference for the pair -- either of both
members -- over all other candidates.)
That "strategic voting" harms results in Range is
then misused by critics as a criticism of Range.
In fact, Range with strategic voting does not
degrade to the point that it is not better than
other methods. Obviously, if all voters vote
using Approval strategy -- which doesn't really
improve expected results for many of them -- the
method has fully degraded to Approval. Which is
still an excellent method, with lower average
regret in the simulations than Plurality or IRV.
----
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
