You might say that you've heard some academic author say that it's good to avoid need for defensive strategy. But, when Markus asks if I can name an acadamic who's said that, I have to say "Not off hand". I can name Markus, however--he expressed the wish of ensuring that sincere voting won't be punished. As I told Markus, I feel sure that some professors, if cornered, would have to agree that that sounds like a good goal. But what we usually hear is that any insincere voting is "manipulation", a bad thing, an effort to cheat the voting system. And, according to this doctrine, methods are spoken of according to how vulnerable to manipulation they are. With millions of voters strategically forced to vote insincerely, the academics seem to be uninterested in the goal of reducing that need for insincerity, and insist on recognizing only the following problem with insincerity: It's a manipulation attempt' that shouldn't succeed. If it can succeed, then the method is vulnerable to strategy. So if you're someone who likes Nader best, but you're going to vote for Gore as a lesser-evil, you're a scheming manipulator, and if you succeed in avoiding the election of your last choice, you've manipulated the method and shown that Plurality is vulnerable to manipulation. Now do you see why I said "Heads up the ass"? Markus is very upset with me for my heresy of wanting to protect an insincere voter--even it it's only by protecting him from his need for insincerity! Is Plurality bad because "manipulation" by lesser-of-2-evils voters can succeed in defeating their last choice? Or is Plurality good because they can suffer by giving away their favorite's win when they try to manipulate the election in that way? Now you know why I said those guys aren't within hailing distance of real voters and their practical concerns. Oh, one more thing--Academics rarely acknowledge that it might be that everyone won't rank all of the candidates, even though truncation can be observed in every rank balloting. Catchy's professors out to lunch? You be the judge. I seem to have stirred up lots of anger among some defenders of dogma. Mike Ossipoff _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com.
