Juho wrote: > > What is btw the reason that there were no arrows forward from the two > leading candidates in the election snapshot picture in the references page? > Did they abstain or were their votes (not even their own vote) not cascaded > forward for some other reason?
http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/outline.xht#delegate-cascade They abstained. > The behaviour of voter A in the example above may be quite "sincere". He > likes B. If B forwards his votes to some candidate that A considers to be > worse than C then A may vote for C directly. So A has good reason to vote for C, even though C (suppose) is a star having many times - thousands of times - more votes. The reason might be: i) A knows C personally or professionally ii) C is recommended by A's favourite talk-show host (i) If communication channels (personal or professional) give A influence over C, and not just knowledge (in other words, if the channels are 2-way) then A may be voting rationally, in the sense of effectively. (ii) Otherwise, A is a mosquito voting for an elephant! It's probably not rational. It would be better to vote for a mouse (the talk-show host, M), assuming that M *is* actually voting (directly or indirectly) for C. Then the direct effect on C would be the same - she'd still be receiving A's vote. But now A would have gained an open, 2-way communication channel to C, via M. Or A could band together with other, like-minded mosquitoes (perhaps by soliciting their votes) and vote en-masse for C. Then C would be more likely to pay attention to their demands etc. > I expect the cycles in opinions to potentially cause repeated changes in > the cast votes (but since I don't know yet exactly how the voter will be > cascaded I will not attempt to describe the details yet). > >> http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/theory.xht#cascade-cyclic > > Could you explain what happened in Figure 9? What are the rules that keep > one vote at five of the candidates (red numbers) but forward some of the > votes to the next candidate in the ring? I.e. why not forward all votes or > keep all votes? [The vote flow volumes (black) were wrong. I've corrected them.] The votes flow individually. Although received votes (black inbound) are normally carried back out along with the delegate's own vote (black outbound), there is one exception: if carriage of a vote would result in a cycle (the vote being received a second time), then that vote stops. The stopped vote is held where it is (red), and the other votes continue on their way. That's why the held votes deposit themselves evenly around the ring. (The exception in the figure is the one vote injected from outside of the ring.) As a consequence, casting a vote has no effect on votes received. If any one of the voters in figure 9 withdraws her vote (black out), it will not affect her received votes (black in). And since electoral standing is determined by votes received, and not by votes held (red), the casting of a vote can never increase ones standing. I doubt Figure 9 will ever occur in a real election - it's very much an edge case - but if it does, it shouldn't cause any instability. Unless I've overlooked something... -- Michael Allan Toronto, 647-436-4521 http://zelea.com/ ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info