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. 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.
What do you think of Cardinal Weighted Pairwise? It uses a Condorcet
matrix and sets the direction of defeats according to inferred ranking
of the rated ballots, but the magnitude according to the rating. James
Green-Armytage also suggests that a method that makes use of it
normalize the ratings within the Smith set so the voters don't have to
guess at what the Smith set will actually be.
Why the latter is a good thing is a separate discussion... ----
I think Abd once argued that people will "automatically" vote in the
Approval, maximum for all those I like better than the lesser evil,
minimum for the rest, manner. IIRC, he called it "Neumann-van
Morgenstern utilities".
I don't think so, so I think Approval burdens people with the need to be
strategic, but there you go -- that's at least one person arguing that
one should (and would) rather use strategic utilities.
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