On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 2:53 AM, Juho Laatu <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 24.6.2013, at 16.06, Benjamin Grant wrote: > > So, as far as *I* can see, this converts Score Voting into Approval > voting. The only people who would bother to vote sincerely are:**** > 1) Those who truly prefer Gore highest and Bush lowest (or vice > versa), because there’s no strategic downside. > > > You seem to assume that voters with opinion 'Gore:75, Nader: 90, Bush: 10’ > are not strategic when they vote 'Gore:75, Nader: 100, Bush: 0’. There are > thus two possible levels of sincereness, either people who think that all > candidates are about equally good should vote that way, or if they should > exaggerate and tell that the worst one of them is worth 0 points and the > best one is worth 100 points. > But in the instance where someone's highest priority is to stop Bush, and a distant second level priority is to see Nader elected over Gore, it seems unavoidable to admit that if they vote 'Gore:75, Nader: 100, Bush: 0’ they will be harming their first priority by withholding support from Gore. Isn't this correct? So then that is a non-strategic vote in comparison to 100/whatever/0, yes? That's what makes strategic voting different from sincere voting, isn't it: that strategic voting has a greater chance of creating a more preferred outcome? So long as the strategic vote and the sincere vote are not the same, a sincere vote is a vote against your preferences. That is why it seems so important to me to favor system where those two kinds of voting coincide as often as possible, right? > It’s days like these that I feel that there *is* no way to elect people > that is fair and right. L > > All methods have some problems. But the problems are not always so bad > that they would invalidate the method. I'd propose to study also the > Condorcet compliant methods. I note that they already popped up in the > later discussions and you more or less already promised to study them. > > When compared to Range style utility measuring style Condorcet methods > take another approach by allowing majorities to decide. With sincere > (Range) preferences 55: A=100 B=90, 45: B=100 A=0 majority based methods > allow A to win. Althoug B has clearly higher sum of utiliy, it is also a > fact that if one would elect B, B would be opposed by 55% majority. A would > be supported by 55% majority. Not a pretty sight to watch, but that's how > majority oriented systems are suposed to work. Maybe the majority > philosophy is that you will get a ruler that can rule (and there is no > mutiny), instead of getting a ruler whose proposals would be voted against > every time by 55% majority in the parliament or in public elections. > > Juho > Interesting observation. Personally, in the above example, my gut tells me that B "ought" to win. However, start tweaking B's numbers downwards, and at some point we will find a level in which A actually looks better that B, for example: 55: A=100 B=40 45: B=50 A=0 Now B isn't looking so good compared to A. So there is obviously some threshold - which may be different for each of us - at which A is the better choice. Perhaps score voting (when everyone *does* vote sincerely) captures that threshold - maybe B "ought" to win when his numbers are highest. Problem is, a lot of people - perhaps even most - will soon get wise how to push their preferences, and suddenly the Ballots start to look a lot like this: 55: A=100 B=0 45: B=100 A=0 And then we are back where we started. -Benn
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