At 12:34 AM 11/26/2008, Juho Laatu wrote:
One approach to sincerity is to compare voter
behaviour to the requested behaviour. In
Approval if the request is to mark all
candidates that one approves then placing the
cutoff between two main candidates is often
insincere.. Approval is a special method from
this point of view since it is often described
as requiring the voter to plan what is the best
strategic vote (where to put the cutoff).
It requires no such thing. Voters, however, will
maximize their expected outcome if they vote
optimally. And they vote optimally by making a
sincere expression, and this is it: if they
prefer any candidate to the expected election
outcome, vote for that candidate. If not, don't.
This is a sincere preference expression.
It certainly is not an expression of "approval,"
hence I have often stated that ballot
instructions for voters should not use the word
"Approve." The instructions *might* use the word
"accept," but even that is doubtful. Voters
aren't stupid. A statement could be like, "This
election will pick one winner. You may vote for
as many candidates as you choose to support,
including a write-in candidate. The winner will
be the candidate who receives the most votes."
Telling the voters how to vote is offensive.
However, I'd presume that if Approval is
implemented, there would be plenty of advice out
there. Some of it might actually be good.
What is the "expected election outcome"? It's the
average, approximately, of the frontrunners.
I.e., one might assume that the election is a
tossup between the two frontrunners. Literally,
it's a tie. If you don't vote for one of them, or
you vote for both, your vote wil not affect the
result, it will be moot. If you vote for one of
them, only, your vote will count. Vote as if you
vote will count, for the candidate you sincerely
prefer to that lottery. And vote the same way for all candidates.
Simple. Sincere. Actually applying it with
precision, of course, difficult. But it's just
one vote that the voter must decide, which has
very little chance of being a deciding vote.
Another way of putting it is, don't vote so that
you will seriously regret your vote. If you
bullet vote, and it turns out that if you'd have
approved another candidate, that candidate would
have won over a total jerk whom you detest,
you'll regret your vote. If you vote for two, and
your favorite loses, but the other one you voted
for is acceptable, that's not much of a cause for
regret, even if the race was close and you might think your vote decided it.
A single vote, in Approval, never, by itself,
decides an election. Instead, it decides between
a lottery and a election. That is, it converts a
tie between two candidates into an election of
one, or the election of the other into a tie.
Therefore the possible regret from a vote is
reduced to half the utility difference between the candidates.
It gets simpler if a majority is required, which
is one reason why such requirements are
brilliant. Did I mention that requiring a
majority for any decision is basic to democratic
process, and we only abandon it for practical
reasons having to do with the difficulty of large-scale eletions?
When a majority is required, the question one
might be answering with an Approval vote is "Do
you prefer this candidate to having the election
fail, necessitating further process?" If so, vote
for the candidate. If not, don't. The answer to
this question is dependent on expectations of
what would happen if the there is majority
failure. Majority failure can seriously improve
results if it leads to a good runoff process.
Might be a new nominee! Or the field is narrowed
and one's favorite might have a better chance.
With a majority requirement, one can more safely
bullet vote, i.e., express a single preferred
candidate. But, of course, if one would prefer to
vote for an additional candidate to avoid the
need to go to a runoff, then one can do so.
In any case, the vote, seen in this way, is a
sincere expression of preference, and not voting
sincerely doesn't produce any advantage for the voter.
It's important to realize that these expressions
of sincere vote in Approval are also
strategically maximal. They produce optimal
expectation, there is no more powerful way to
vote. The only way to improve them is to have
better information about the election
probabilities, i.e., to be better informed. Let's
see -- Approval gives more power to voters who
are better informed. Aha! I knew it! The method
is elitist! Those mathematicians and political
scientist who promoted Approval Voting, they just
want to give an advantage to educated people, who
are well-known to be liberal elitists, just like
those biased newspaper reporters, the ones who
actually meet and talk with the candidates, who
want to lord it over all the rest of us common
people with their superior knowledge. Down with
all of them! To the barricades! Send them to the collective farms!
Ahem. Range and Approval reward sincere voting,
if sincere is understood. The "insincere voting"
that they allegedly reward is based on
assumptions of what the votes mean that are
inaccurate and essentially baseless. Certainly a
vote under Approval doesn't mean that the voter
"approves" of the candiate, in the ordinary
sense. It's an unfortunate name for the method,
for this reason. Count All the Votes is what I
like to call it. Open Voting might be a nice name, what do you think?
Open Voting.
Yes, I like it.
Another interesting case is Range. If one
requests the voters to mark their utilities then
sincere voting might be rare since strategic
exaggeration is practically always available and
an efficient strategy. One can describe Range
also as "Approval with ability to cast weak
votes". In this case it could be as sincere as Approval.
I think these two Range description styles
actually refer to two different methods although
the voting and vote counting procedures are technically the same.
Also possible request to normalize one's vote
vs. to just mark sincere utilities makes a difference in Range.
In summary, Approval is close to being a method
where voters are expected to vote strategically,
and therefore voters need not be insincere when
doing so. In most methods (and environments) any
deviation from one's sincere opinion in order to
win in the election should however be classified
as insincerity (and as unwanted strategic voting).
Juho
--- On Wed, 26/11/08, Kevin Venzke <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> From: Kevin Venzke <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Re: [EM] Why the concept of "sincere" votes in Range is flawed.
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Date: Wednesday, 26 November, 2008, 6:45 AM
> Hello,
>
> --- En date de : Mar 25.11.08, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> a écrit :
> > What Approval sincerely represents from a voter is a
> > *decision* as to where to place an Approval cutoff.
>
> But is it not true that what *all* methods sincerely
> represent from a
> voter are the decisions related to voting under that
> method?
>
> If a decision makes sense in a given context, then that is
> a sincere
> decision. Is that not your stance?
>
> Kevin Venzke
>
>
>
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