Chris--
I object far more to the "equal-rank near the top" incentive that exists for some voters (including "zero-info." voters) in equal-ranking allowed Winning Votes defeat-dropper.
I reply:
Remember that it's been shown that every nonrandom method gives some kind of incentive for strategic voting. But we must distinguish between mild incentives such as you describe, and needs for drastic misrepresentation of preferences in order to protect majority rule, or to protect the win of a CW.
The equal-ranking incentive that you describe is gotten rid of by AERLO.
When that equal-ranking incentive was discussed, I never denied that it's a problem, but I claim that it's not as bad as the strategy problems that wv avoids, and that other methods have. Problems involving need for drastic misrepresentation of preferences to protect majority rule or to protect the win of a CW.
But, though the equal-ranking incentive isn't as bad a problem, it would still be better to not have it. I once mentioned that, with unenhanced wv, if a voter considers the candidates to be in 2 sets such that the merit difference within those sets is negligible compared to the merit difference between those sets, that voter should rank all his/her better-set candidates together in 1st place. I said that, being such a voter, for me wv voting would be like Approval voting. Not a problem, because I really do consider the candidates to be in two sets such as that. The important thing for me, then, is to make that most important distinction.
But, since many or most wouldn't agree with me about those acceptable/compleltely-unacceptable sets, most would have incentive to sincerely rank all the candidates except maybe for a few whom they refuse to rank due to principle or order-reversal-deterrence.
Still, it would be a nice luxury for everyone to have no incentive to do other than sincerely rank those better-set candidates. AERLO ensures that. That isn't the only value of AERLO. It, along with ATLO, also is a way to make order-reversal-deterrence easier.
Mike Ossipoff
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