Andrew--
You said:
I would think that if votes are sincere, the best voting method would not be Condorcet at all. It would be for each voter to assign a number of points to each candidate representing the utility they ascribe to that candidate. The candidate with the largest total utility would win. This method has obvious advantages over Condorcet: it is simpler and takes advantage of more information from the voters.
I reply:
That's CR. If voters have no wish to maximize their own utility expectation, and only want to rate truly in order to maximize social utility, then CR is what maximizes social utility.
But that doesn't mean that those conditions are the only ones in which CR is an excellent method.
You continue:
Of course, it is trivially vulnerable to insincere voters.
I reply:
CR is the only method for which it has been demonstrated that nothing, not even insincere voters, can give you a reason to vote someone over your favorite. (Of course Approval is a CR version).
As I was saying before, this emphasis on vulnerability to strategy completely misses the point, and the boat.
Is IRV very vulnerable to insincere strategy? Is Plurality vulnerable to insincere strategy? Is that the problem of IRV and Plurality, their vulnerability to insincere strategy?
What's wrong with Plurality & IRV is that, even without any offensives insincere strategy to be vulnerable to, they often strategically force voters to bury their favorite, reverse their preferences, and conceal what they want. As I said, that isn't good for democracy.
That's why I suggest that the emphasis should, instead, be on minimizing the need for drastic defensive strategy. Minimize the extent to which voters need to violate their own wishes in order to protect majority rule or to protect the win of a CW.
CR has been shown to meet FBC and WDSC. That makes CR a big improvement over Plurality and IRV. Let's not ask for so much that we ask people to enact something that is less winnable.
The trouble with rank methods is that there are innumerable ways to count rankings. It's necessary to show people that the rank-count that you propose is the best one. That could take a long time, especially when the IRVists are heavily promoting their meritless rank-count, and other proposals will be heard too. There's only one obvious and natural way to count CR: Add up each candidate's points.
Another problem with rank methods is that, even with the best rank methods in place, voters will still feel a strategic need to rank Compromise over Favorite, if they don't understand the count rule. I've spoken to people said that either they or someone else wouldn't want to rank Nader over Kerry, for fear of not giving Kerry enough support against Bush. Would they be willing to rank Nader equal to Kerry? Depends on how well they understand the count rule. But if that's the best that they'll do, then why not just propose CR instead?
Mike Ossipoff
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