On Aug 27, 2010, at 4:15 PM, Jonathan Lundell wrote:
On Aug 27, 2010, at 12:48 PM, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
with Score and Approval, it's easy to mark your favorite candidate
(Score=99 or Approval=1). and we know that Satan gets Score=0 or
Approval=0. then what do you do with other candidates that you
might think are better than Satan? that question has never been
answered by Clay. and any answer must be of a strategic nature.
That is, to my mind, a fundamental problem with cardinal-rating
systems--approval, borda, range, etc. Except for some trivial cases
(notably two-candidate elections), the voting act is necessarily a
strategic exercise.
in my opinion, if you can break down a multi-candidate election into
two-candidate elections where the end result would not be different
(the Condorcet winner would be elected) then i think you've gotten
past the burden of strategic voting.
in my opinion, when Candidate A is preferred by a majority of voters
to Candidate B, then, if Candidate B is elected, some kind of anomaly
or pathology (that might encourage one to vote strategically in the
future).
With an ordinal method (IRV, Condorcet (though one could, I suppose,
specify a non-ordinal cycle breaker), Bucklin) it's at least
possible (and usually a good idea) to cast a sincere ballot.
i just think that the strategy of swinging an election from the
Condorcet winner into a cycle is just a risky strategy. you never
know who will come out on top; your worst enemy might just as well as
the centrist may or as well as your candidate. with something like
Schulz (or Ranked Pairs which does not result in a different candidate
with a Smith set of 3, and bigger than 3 seems to me even more
unlikely than that of getting a cycle anyway), you are emphasizing
more decisive elections in settling the ambiguity of a cycle.
say Ranked Pairs was the law, what kind of realistic strategizing can
a party or group of candidate supporters do? that example of tossing a
close election between RC (for radical center) and M (the centrist
candidate who is also the Condorcet winner if sincere ballots are
cast) is, in my opinion, too contrived to be a secure strategic
guidance. any strategy that can just as well backfire, is no strategy.
Why the latter is a good thing is a separate discussion...
why casting a sincere ballot is a good thing or not? i would be
interested in reading such a discussion. and, maybe even, piping in.
--
r b-j [email protected]
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
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