Chris--
You wrote:
CB: Range Voting is fine if all one cares about is "minimizing Bayesian regret" (Warren D. Smith, one of the paper's authors) or meeting the "Favourite Betrayal Criterion" (i.e. never having a strategic incentive to Compromise).
I reply:
Any method is best if all one cares about is its criterion compliances. So what?
You have differrent criteria, and that's fine. Some want to get rid of the lesser-of-2-evils problem. You need to understand that, just as you aren't wrong to have the criteria that you have, neither are those wrong who want to get rid of the lesser-of-2-evils problem, to reduce the need for drastically insincere defensive strategy.
You continued:
To cheerfully assert, as W.D. Smith does, that "minimizing Bayesian regret" trumps majority rule is tantamount to saying that more emotional voters should have more power than less emotional voters, which in my view is nonsensical and unfair.
I reply:
Range-Voting (also known as CR) doesn't give more power to one voter than to another.
In fact, oppose to what you imply, with CR, the less emotional, more strategic, voter will use his power more effectively. That's his business. If the sincere voter wants to give up sosme trategic power in order to rate sincerely, that too is his business.
You continued:
One of the aims of a voting method should be to minimize the advantage well informed strategists have over sincere voters. Under Range Voting, well informed strategists will have much more clout than naive sincere voters.
I reply:
As I said, the voter who chooses to vote strategically uses more of his power than does the voter who chooses to rate sincerely. Why is that a problem to you. They both have a right to vote as they choose to.
You continued:
To me, it is axiomatic that a single-winner voting method should, with sincere voting, reduce to FPP when there are only two candidates.
I reply:
Axiomatic? You're giving to us a fundamental standard that you have. That's your axiom. You mustn't expect everyone to have the same axioms that you have.
You continued:
RV doesn't. No voting method is invulnerable to informed strategy, but meeting No Zero-Information Strategy is very easy to meet, so why not at least achieve that? RV doesn't.
I reply:
"Even"? :-) Meaning that you think that CR doesn't achieve anything else? If that isn't what you mean, then what do you mean?
Anyway, since our public elections aren't 0-info elections, your criterion isn't very important for those public elections.
As for the way of counting blank votes, I don't know what's best. Your objection to it sounds valid. Maybe it's better to count a blank vote as a mid-rating. That's what I suggested for interpreting no mark in -1,0,1, when the ballot has a box for 1 and a box for -1, and no box for 0, and a voter doens't mark any box for a particular candidatre.
You continued:
I dislike methods that pose any sort of problem for voters who simply want to vote their full sincere ranking. Approval is horrible in this respect: voters must agonize on where to place their approval cutoff.
I reply:
Agonize? Nearly always you know which ones you want to vote for, which ones deserve a vote.
But if you don't, then just vote for all the above-average ones, especiallly if the elecdtion is 0-info.
Earlier I said that our elections aren't 0-info. I mis-stated. Now our elections are 0-info, but they won't remain so when we get an adequate voting system.
Or just vote for each candidate who is so good that you'd rather put him/her in office instead of holding the election, if you had that choice. That's the better-than-expectation strategy of Approval. If it's CR, give maximum points to those and minimum points to the others. Unless you choose to rate sincely, as is your right.
You wrote:
but is 3-slot CR the best 3-slot method? I say definitely not!
I reply:
Maybe not. Maybe 3-rank-position Condorcet is better.
But Condorcet with still more rank positions is better still. CR is probably more winnnable due to its simplicity & familiarity.
Mike Ossipoff
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