Jonathan Lundell wrote:
> ... if a voter can pick a favorite (as required for plurality),
> then a voter can build an ordered list.
Only if abstention is an option beginning at any iteration. In other
words, the voter has to have the option of saying, I will stay home
rather than vote for any of the remaining candidates. Otherwise, the
ability to order all of the candidates does not follow from the ability
to pick one from a list longer than the list in the current iteration.
--Bob Richard
Jonathan Lundell wrote:
On Jan 25, 2009, at 3:50 PM, James Gilmour wrote:
Jonathan Lundell > Sent: Sunday, January 25, 2009 10:21 PM
If we regard the preference order as list of contingent choices (this
view has come up in IRV discussions), then the ability to vote in a
plurality election implies the ability to produce such a list, ......
Preferences in IRV elections are contingency choices, but I do not
see why the ability to pick one winner from the set on offer in a
plurality election in any way implies that I have the ability to
produce an ordered list of preferences for those candidates who are
not my favourite. All I need to know for the plurality election is
"they are not my favourite" - I do not need to have any
preferences among the non-favourite sub-set.
I mean that, in general, if we can choose a favorite in a plurality
election, then we can produce a ranked list contingently by iterating
the process. That is to say, asking a voter to produce a ranked list
in this manner is in principle no more difficult than choosing a
single favorite (albeit involving more effort in that the selection
has to be repeated). And absent enough information to implement a
successful strategy, the result ought to be optimum for methods like
IRV and Condorcet.
That is, creating such a list is merely a series of "who is my
favorite" applied to a shrinking set of candidates.
That's in contrast to approval and range voting, where the voter is
asked to do "something else".
I'm not making a particularly important point here, only that if a
voter can pick a favorite (as required for plurality), then a voter
can build an ordered list.
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Bob Richard
Marin Ranked Voting
P.O. Box 235
Kentfield, CA 94914-0235
415-256-9393
http://www.marinrankedvoting.org
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