I liked Professor Smith's Range-Voting articles. I was one of those who felt that Range-Voting (CR) was a little bit less desirable than Approval because sincere voters can be taken advantage of by strategizers. But, as Smith points out, it won't really be like that. Everyone will have benefit of strategic advice (look at all the strategic advice we get now, from honest individuals (even if their lesser-evil strategy is based on false information)). Some will choose to vote sincerely. Sometimes I probably would.
I'd mentioned some time ago that, if Nader-preferers who feel the need to vote for Kerry vote sincerely, and rate Kerry below Nader, I like that.
IRV promoters mistakenly repeat endleslly that Approval voting will revert to Plurality. No, if people know what they're doing, they'll always vote for their favorite. And if Nader preferrers now feel a need to vote for Kerry, they'll do so in Approval too, till they notice that Nader outpolls the Republican. So, in the 1st Approval election, they'll vote for Kerry and Nader, in Approval. But if it were CR, and if they vote sincerely, they'll help their sincere favorite against their lesser-evil, and that's a good thing, not only for Nader, but also for honesty and democracy.
But what if there are 2 genuine progressives, and you like one better than the other, and Approval strategy says to vote for both, to defeat the completely unacceptable candidates? Do you downrate one of those progressives in CR? I hope not. What's a good thing with Kerry/Nader wouldn't be such a good thing then. But Democrat vs Nader is the situation now, and in that now-exsting situation, sincerely-voted CR would be a good thing.
Smith expresses that in terms of Schwartrznegger's election, but I prefer to put it in terms of Kerry & Nader, as I did above. Anyway, his argument makes sense.
Smith's information about 67% sincerity in CR is encouraging, at least when it means progressives will downrate the Democerat.
It seems to me that he reported that people voted Approval like Plurality. There's nothing wrong with that strategy, but I believe that Smith is mistaken if he's saying that that's how Approval will be used in a public election by people who know how Approval works. As I said, progressives who now think they need the Democrat will act on that belief in Approval too, and will vote for Nader and the Democrat.
Why would his survey show otherwise? Maybe he spoke to sincere voters who vote by principle. Maybe he spoke to voters who didn't believe that they needed the Democrat. Maybe he spoke to people who didn't understand how Approval works:
I've encountered such people, and it's one reason why CR is probably a better public proposal.
One person objected to Approval, saying that if you vote for the progressive, that weakens your vote for Democrat over Republican. Of course it in no way affects your Democrat>Republican vote.
Another person told me that, though Nader is more honest than Kerry, and offers better policies than Kerry, that person would vote only for kerry in Approval. Due to a mistaken impression of how Approval works? Maybe. Or maybe due to the completely misguided progressive anger at Nader for allegedly spoiling the corrupt Democrat. This may sound surprising, but many progressives confuse stratgegy with candidate merit, and will telll you that Nader is less desirable--and when asked why, can only give you the alleged strategic reasons for not voting Nader. But somehow they begin to perceive that as a matter of candidate merit rather than strategy. "But isn't Nader egotistical" (because takes votes from the corrupt media-anointed candidates)? "He's whacko" (Further questioning reveals that he's whacko because he runs though he isn't viable, not because of his policies).
If Smith's survey said that progressives will vote only for Kerry in Approval, and if that's what will happen, it isn't just a fault of Approval; it's a hopelessness about voting. That 2nd person that I spoke of, when voting in an Internet straw poll (at the excellent website
http://www.masquilier.org/agora ) ranked Kerry first, and ranked Nader far down the ranking, below Dean and a few other Democrats, even though that voter said that Nader was more honest and offered better policies. Could it be that we're wating our time by offering better voting systems?
Smith said that to vote probabilistically in Approval, to simulate CR, required specially-construced dice, and much complexity. Not really. Can't decide whetiher to vote for someone? Flip a coin. How complicated is that?
If the method is Approval and you want to cast a sincere CR vote, you don't need custom-made dice: Cut 10 identical squares or rectangles from a piece of paper or cardboard, roughly a square inch or two each. Number them from 0 to 9. Put them in a paper bag. Say you want to give to a candidate .79 votes. Take a number out of the bag, and write it on a piece of paper. Return the number to the bag. Take a number out again and write it directly after the first number, as the 2nd digit of a 2-digit number. If that number is less than 79, vote for the candidate.
Smith mentioned Bayesian regret. I've heard of it, but not heard it defined. If I read his definition correctly, it's the SU (social utility) of the SU maximizer minus the SU of the winner. Is that right? One way to minimize it is to prevent high SU candidates from running. Another way is to maximize SU of the winner. Smith says that CR does best at that. But that would only be true under sincere voting, and under the special conditions where the CW doesn't maximize SU.
As I mentioned here before, the CW maximizes SU under a wide variety of conditions.
1. When there's 1 issue dimension.
2. When there are more issue dimensions and:
a. Distance (representing disutility) is measured by city-block distance
b. Distance is measured by Euclidean distance, and the population-density-distribution has the
following property:
Along any line through some point, the population density along that line, starting from that
point, is the same in both directions from the point.
That property is had, for one thing, when density is normallly distributed in each issue-dimension
as is the case in pretty much all simulations. Normal distribution is widely, and reasonably,
assumed for various social distributions.
So then, we can expect that the CW will maximize SU. That doesn't depend on sincere voting. I suggest, then, that Condorcet maximizes SU more reliably than CR does, and therefore does better at minimizing Bayesian regret--if Bayesian regret means what I believe it does.
There may be more that I want to say about the article. If so, I'll mention it in the article's context:
Smith wrote:
6.BAYESIAN REGRET (FOR STATISTICS NERDS):
Approval voting does quite badly (measured by Bayesian Regret)
compared to many other more expressive voting systems such
as Borda and Black, when there are 4 or more candidates and we have honest voters.
I reply:
He means nonstrategizing voters. Strategizing isn't dishonest. Borda isn't going to give us nonstrategic voting. It can't be counted on in any method other than maybe Condorcet.
But if voters are divided between strategy and sincere rating, maybe CR will do better than Approval by SU, if the Approval strategy is based on incorrect information. I don't expect CR to do better than Condorcet by SU under actual conditions.
Smith writes:
Approval is better than these systems [Borda, Black, CR]- for strategic voters - but is worse for honest ones.
I reply:
We have many insincere voters now. Probably some, maybe many, would vote sincerely in CR.
Summary:
Smith seems right about CR giving better results than Approval for our current political situation, with Republicans, Democrats, and progressives who (think they) need to help a lesser-evil. But when there are 2 or more genuine progressives, and some completely unacceptable candidates, sincere CR voting by progressives could be detremental, and Approval voting for them all seems better.
Bullet voting in Approval by people who now vote lesser-of-2-evils won't happen if they know how Approval works.
Of course in the 2nd Approval election, when they notice that Nader outpolled the Republican, votinlg only for Nader would be good strategy.
Though CR with some sincere voting might very well give better SU than Approval when Approval stragtegy is based on incorrect information, I'm skeptical about Smith's claim that CR gives better SU than Condorcet.
Though, if we disregard public acceptance, I like Condorcet better than CR, and like Approval better than sincere CR when it's several genuine progressives vs some completely unacceptable candidates, I don't share Smith's stong opposition among those methods. I like Condorcet, Approval, and CR.
Many advocates of Condorcet, CR, or Approval strongly oppose the other two of those methods. I like them all.
Mike Ossipoff
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