> rob brown Sent: Thursday, December 01, 2005 1:38 AM
> Not sure that's really what I meant, because it all depends
> on the definition of "democratic" and don't think I want to
> go there. :) I suppose its unfair, but even that is
> debatable.
What I had in mind was if I vote 1, 2, 3, 4 (1 = most preferred, the one I want to see win) for candidates A, B, C, D,
and you vote 100, 99, 2, 1 (1 = most preferred) for the same four candidates, it would be fundamentally undemocratic if
your vote counted for more in determining the result just because you expressed your preferences more strongly that I
did.
Well yes, I agree with that. I choose not to use the term "undemocratic" because it is so subject to opinion as to what it means....but all I can say is its a bad, bad idea to allow that.
I tend to view things from a Game Theory perspective, (or classical economics, for that matter), where the assumption is that everyone is independently pursuing their own self interest. A system which is designed for people who do not behave this way is inherently unstable and unpredictable, so best just to design it for selfish people, who -- in thr case of elections -- would vote in the manner that is strategically best for them.
I cannot imagine a scenario where it doesn't make the most strategic sense to give your vote the maximum weight, assuming you vote at all. (unless, of course you can save that "voting power" for another election, but let's keep this simple by assuming you can't)
I made my comment following this paragraph of yours:
> Intentionally
> ignoring this information (or, more likely, not collecting it
> in the first place) is the only thing that makes
> sense....otherwise people who had any opinion whatsoever would
> have an incentive to vote insincerely, saying they felt very
> strongly so as to have the most impact on the outcome.
I had not assumed your comment in this paragraph was about a single question poll, but about single-winner elections in
general, where there might usually be several candidates. The only example of normalisation of weighted preferences I
have seen was for multi-seat elections, but I see no reason why the principle is not equally applicable to single-winner
elections where the votes are recorded as weighted preferences.
Yeah, well I'm not sure what I was talking about anymore. :) I tried to make a simple analogous example to make a point, but others wanted to make add complications, which kind of led the discussion astray. I agree with your comments, but none of really applies to the little point I was trying to make....
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