On Aug 31, 2009, at 4:10 PM, Warren Smith wrote:
On 8/31/09, Raph Frank <[email protected]> wrote:
What you could do is take a "poll" and have 10 random voters. You
then work out optimal assuming that they are the electorate.
--there is no such thing as "optimal strategy" in games with >=3
players. Game theory breaks down. So, in general, this cannot be
done. The only way to do it is to add to game theory some other
ingredient, such as some model of how the other voters act
(which will thenbe, in fact, false, since it isn't the way YOU are
acting!).
I think there is no need for exact mathematical models and results
here. Some credible heuristic algorithms that model the voter
behaviour will do, just like in your simulations. The voters
themselves must be able to use such heuristic (or exact, if available)
models to decide if and how to vote strategically. If one can not give
them such simple guidance (or if the party strategists (or media) can
not recommend some appropriate strategy to them) then they might
simply not apply strategies. And if no good strategy can be found,
then you may assume that those voters might indeed not vote
strategically in the election and election method in question although
they might in principle be willing to apply strategies to win the
election.
This approach of course may also lead to having different percentage
of strategic voting in different methods instead of having the same
fixed percentage of strategic voters in each method.
Juho
----
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
