--- On Fri, 9/1/09, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <a...@lomaxdesign.com> wrote:
> The whole concept of strategic voting is flawed when > applied to Range. Voters place vote strength where they > think it will do the most good -- if they think. Words "where they think it will do the most good" sound like strategic thinking to me (if you mean that voters will use different values depending on how they expect others to vote). Placing vote strength in line with how good the candidates are would be sincere. > Approval is essentially, as Brams claimed, > "strategy-free," in the old meaning I'd rather say that Approval voters are expected to use a strategy (in the sense that they will optimize their vote based on how they expect others to vote). Approval is relatively free of strategies in the sense that there are not many tricks one can do beyond applying the default strategy. > , and the only > way that it was at all possible to call it vulnerable was > that critics claimed that there was some absolute > "approval" relation between a voter and a > candidate. There are two very different scenarios here. If voters mark candidates that they sincerely approve (they are maybe requested to do so) then voters that use the basic Approval strategy will be more efficient (=> the method is vulnerable to strategies). But if all are expected to use the basic strategy then there is not much space for additional tricks. > > > There is no absolute approval cutoff > > In other words, it's not possible to define an Approval > vote as "sincere" or "insincere," unless > it reverses preference, which is insincere, and which > Approval does not reward; at best it is moot. I didn't intend to say that. Individual voters may well be capable of saying which candidates they sincerely approve and which ones not even if there is no absolute scale in use. (Since "insincere" has a negative tone it is maybe better to talk about "sincere" and "strategic" votes. As you can see above my basic definition of "strategic" is that the voter tries to optimize the expected outcome of the election and takes into account how others are expected to vote.) Preference reversal and other preference modifications are both similar "crimes" to me (typically strategic). Reversals mean on average bigger changes than non-reversing modifications. > > There are no "absolute" and measurable > > opinions. Much depends on what the voters > > think they are supposed to do. > > An odd view, in my opinion. What the voters are > "supposed to do"? Who is the sovereign who sets > these requirements? See above. Either there is an explicit request/recommendation (in the ballot or elsewhere) or the members of the society just have a common understanding on how they "usually" vote. The point is that in every election there is some default behaviour, or alternatively different people have different understanding (this is problematic in most cases). > Here is what I'm supposed to do, as a voter: exercise > my choice. Hopefully, it's an informed one, which > includes understanding the voting system and how it works, > the context, and the likely consequences of my action. The last few words above sound like strategic thinking to me. In ranked ballots we typically take as granted that people are expected to put the candidates in the order of preference. If they change that order they would typically do that for strategic reasons. In the first (sincere) case they need not think how others are going to vote (and optimize their vote based on strategic considerations). I tried to apply the same logic in Approval and Range above. Juho ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info