At 01:32 PM 12/2/2008, Jonathan Lundell wrote:
Good point; you're quite right. My claim might be right in the context
of zero polling knowledge, but not otherwise.
Which is all the worse for Approval.
I responded to Mr. Bouricius. His example was misleading, in fact,
because the "illogical" vote was a moot one. He clearly did not
consider X to be a serious challenger to Z, his favorite, and he
voted for X for reasons other than trying to help X win. He did not
want X to win, and the only reason he voted for X was because it was
"harmless." Clearly, he'd have ranked X lower than Z and Y, in IRV,
though, I'll note, his vote probably would not have been counted,
since he had, I presume, a candidate who would have not been
eliminated before X was executed, er, eliminated.
In Approval, his vote counts. All the votes are counted.
The example is actually one of Approval working. The voter set an
approval cutoff *for the real election* between Z and Y, and the X
vote was dicta, a statement made to show some kind of irrelevant
opinion. This is a voter who would have voted for Nader in Florida,
same arguments, really, except that he had the *option*, had it been
Approval, of an additional vote for Y.
Now, did this voter know that his vote only for Z might allow W to
win? Same effect here, with Approval, as was the case in Florida. I
assume that any reasonably informed voter would know this.
Range methods, and Open Voting (Approval) is one of them, only allow
the voter to exercise one full vote over the entire candidate set.
I.e., if you rank the candidates, and place some fraction of the vote
in each candidate pair, the sum equals one. Same is true for
approval, except that the vote in the pairs is limited to zero or
one. In Range, it may be fractional votes. The vote shown by
Bouricius is insincere, but it is clear that the voter only votes
this way because the voter considers the vote will not affect the
outcome. If the voter is mistaken, presumably he might regret it (the
preferences certainly show that, his preference for Z over Y is quite
strong, enough that he will risk the election of W in order to
express it, so Y must be rated, I'd assume, sincerely, probability
below 50%, zero knowledge, and knowledge would increase the rating,
if he cares about outcome. So an outcome of X would be quite bad.
Clearly, he voted this way -- it only makes sense -- to make a
statement that X, or X's party, has some valuable contribution to make.
Note the mix of sincere and strategic in the description of why he
rated them the way he did. He stated that he was voting against Y
because he didn't want Y to beat his favorite. He must think (1) that
this is a reasonable possiblity -- he said that it was -- and (2) he
cares very much about that not happening, and, rationally, cares
about that more than he cares about beating W. Therefore, in fact,
his preference for Z over Y is strong, and I'd suggest that he quite
sincerely votes against Y. Normal strategic considerations would
suggest, unless this is a three way race, he approve Y. Borda would
have him, effectively, approve Y (vote greater than 50%)
So all we have here is a sincere vote for Z and against Y and all the
other candidates, with X being an exception for reasons not stated,
but, whatever the reason for the vote was, the voter only cast the
voter because it was considered "harmless." Maybe he wanted to tell
someone that he voted for Badnarik also....
It has nothing to do with the election, unless he was way off in his
assessment of possibilities, and it elected Badnarik. He was willing
to risk that.
This is not a problem for Approval at all. Approval does better than
Plurality in this situation, and if we are going to face off election
methods, I'd face off Bucklin against IRV, not pure Approval. While
Bucklin does not comply fully with Later No Harm, it is not likely to
be seen by voters that way, the non-compliance only takes place when
a majority is not found, unlike Approval, which only has one round.
And what goes around comes around. Prohibiting LNH violation allows
the voter to not hurt his candidate with a lower ranked vote --
unless a majority is required! -- but it also prevents other voters
from helping the candidate similarly. I'd *never* choose IRV over
Bucklin. Unless I've missed something big!
To summarize this, IRV prevents, unless a majority is required, a
voter's lower rank vote from "harming" the first rank candidate.
However, it does this by preventing other voters, similarly, from
"helping" that same candidate win. We would never respect this in
deliberative process, or simply talking things over with neighbors to
make a common decision, we would see a refusal to reveal second
choices as selfish or partisan, not considering the group welfare,
non-cooperative.
Neighbors are getting together. Some say, "I want A, but B would be
okay if others feel strongly."
One says, "I want C!"
When asked of anything else is acceptable, he says, "No! Not unless
it is certain that we won't choose C. Then, maybe -- I won't say -- I
might have a second choice."
What would you think? Any method which complies with LNH is enforcing
this as a rule, upon everyone. You *cannot* express your second
choice until that choice is eliminated.
It is no wonder that the referee, when reading Woodall's original
paper that defined LNH, expressed disgust, as Woodall points out in
the paper. It is a *highly* controversial criterion. Like a number of
them, it can sound good to someone who has not considered the
implications, and especially to people soaked in politics, where
people fight like cats and dogs for their favorite, when the
candidates that they are fighting for -- and against -- are pretty
much the same. Our team vs. their team.
It's actually bad politics, and it has to go, and eventually it will.
It's fine to make refined choices, that's not the problem. It's when
the overall perspective is lost that we start to see damage.
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