The biggest criticism of the Declaration of Election-Method Reform
Advocates has been that it is too long. I agree that we should educate
voters, but the Declaration is not the appropriate place to get into
lots of detail. There is a need for general-audience materials online
(as indicated in another post), so I would encourage you or anyone else
to make such explanations available.
Richard Fobes
On 10/12/2011 5:25 PM, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote:
...
Before commenting on the methods themselves, I’d like to suggest that
emphasizing the need for a better voting system should be only half of
the declaration’s purpose: It should also advise voters on how to use
Plurality. Voters can benefit greatly from some Plurality strategy
advice, long before we can get a better voting system.
As you know, and this is the problem, many voters in Plurality elections
vote strategically, but without adequate information to inform their
strategic voting. Plurality, like Approval, is a method in which
strategy is justified, if there’s sufficient information for it.
So, tell people that there’s nothing wrong strategic Plurality voting,
if there were enough information for it. The information would consist
of knowledge of other voters’ preferences. Specifically, we’d need
information about each pair of candidates’ probability of being the 2
frontrunners,_based on voters actual preferences_.Maybe the easiest ways
to estimate those pair-frontrunner probabilities would be to estimate
the individual candidates’ or parties’ probabilities of being a
frontrunner, based on past elections (but not on elections where people
vote strategically without sufficient information) and multiplying those
probabilities together for each pair of candidates.
But of course we don’t have any information about actualpreferences.
That’s because, when voters strategize in Plurality, the resulting vote
totals tell us nothing about the voters’ actual preferences.
So tell people that, for that reason, our Plurality elections are
zero-information elections.
Plurality’s strategy in a zero-information election is simple: Vote for
your favorite. That’s what voters need to do, if we’re ever to have the
information needed to inform strategic voting in Plurality.
...
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