On May 7, 2010, at 7:26 PM, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
On May 7, 2010, at 11:48 AM, Kevin Venzke wrote:
--- En date de : Ven 7.5.10, Jameson Quinn
<[email protected]> a écrit :
Thanks for your response. You have some interesting points about
utility not necessarily being summed.
well, *some* sense of utility must be summed if all voters are to be
treated equally and interchangeably.
Often the solution is to simplify things so that the strength of every
opinion in counted as 1. That means that the strengths of individual
utilities/preferences are ignored but as a result of this
simplification all the individual voter opinions are equal in
strength, worth one vote. As a result voting methods will be fair (all
treated equally) and more strategy free although one fails to measure
the strength of the feelings of different individuals.
Juho
As to whether the majority principle is fundamental even though it
can contradict utility: in my schema, you'd defend such a position
with arguments grounded in legitimacy and/or expressivity, and
quite possibly couched in terms of fairness/honesty (that is,
strategy).
For me, the argument is that majority usually *is* consistent with
utility, and you won't
often have any better indicator of utility.
But ignoring majorities will tend to create legitimacy and strategy
problems as well.
totally agree. if the majority candidate is properly identified and
elected, the only strategy i can bring to the poll to help the
political interest i have is to vote for the candidates i believe
hold such interests. but, if somehow, a minority candidate might be
elected, then i have to think hard if voting for the candidate i
like best actually helps my political interest.
and the only issue for me (and why i haven't gotten involved in the
minute discussion) is how to determine such a majority will with
multiple candidates (or parties). for example, i now see the real
problem that the Brits have. with Labour, Lib Dem, Sinn Fein, Plaid
Cymru, Social Dem-Lab, and Green (adds to 327 seats, a working
majority in Commons, Brown should offer the PM to Clegg and see if
he can get everyone to jump on board) and with just Labour and Lib
Dem getting 52% of the popular vote, it's pretty clear to me that
the majority of voting Brits are not Conservative as the Tories
would have you believe.
but, of course one can ask "How do you *know* that Lib Dem and
Labour have more in common with each other than with the Tories?",
and i would say that we don't with FPTP but we can find out with a
ranked order ballot. in my town it would be just like asking "How
do you know the Progressives and Democrats have more in common with
each other than with the Republicans?" We know, and a ranked ballot
would collect that information.
and since everyone agrees how the majority (of equally-franchised
voters) is measured between two candidates (FPTP's "simple majority"
= majority), whatever method we come up with for more than two
candidates should leave the relative majority determination between
Candidates A and B unchanged when more candidates are included. if
there is no cycle, only Condorcet does that. only Condorcet (again,
assuming no cycle) defaults directly to "simple majority" when the
race degenerates to two candidates.
to me, the only issue is how best to resolve a Condorcet paradox, if
one should rarely pop up.
--
r b-j [email protected]
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
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