> It seems to me that there would be a lot more candidates under SODA. >> It's pretty hard to spoil the race and there is benefit to >> be had in receiving some votes. It seems parliamentary that way. How many >> supporters is too few to consider running? >> >> >> Well, there is the 5% cutoff, below which your votes are automatically >> assigned for you. >> >> >> >> >> That's not really a punishment though. The candidate will probably get >> what they would've done anyway. >> >> I really think this is an issue that might need a rule of some kind. Why >> nominate one when you can nominate five? Anybody >> who appeals to some segment of the electorate could help bring in votes. >> Can you imagine if, for example, the Republicans >> were able to nominate every single one of their hopefuls for the >> presidency, with the knowledge that in the end all their votes >> would probably pool together? You don't have to like Gingrich, you can >> vote for Cain. And maybe your vote will end up >> with Gingrich, but without Cain you might not have cast it at all. >> > > That's a fair point.... >
I've thought some more about the "just nominate everyone" problem, and I think it may be worth making a SODA rule to deal with it. The problem with the "first > second + third" rule is that it primarily focuses on the big candidates, while the marginal choice of whether to throw one more hat in the ring is made by the small candidates. So why not do something more obvious: if a candidate gets less than 1%, they cannot use their delegated votes at all. Say candidates are naturally distributed by a modified form of Zipf's law, with the top two candidates set to equal. That is to say, the top two candidates have X% support; the next one has half that, X/2; the next, X/3; etc. It would take 21 candidates to get down to 1% support, and if all votes were delegated or bullet votes, the top two would have 22% support each. The minimum majority coalition would be 7 candidates. If voters were a little more wary of wasting their vote, and left a safety factor of 2 (that is, refused to vote for a candidate whose support was under 2%), then there would be 12 candidates, and the top two would have 24% support each, and the minimum majority coalition would be 5 candidates. And if voters had a safety factor of 2, but there were a 1/3 chance of adding one more approval (that is, 2/9 of voters vote for 2 candidates, 2/27 vote for three, etc.; a total of 150% approvals) then there would be 14 candidates, the top two would have 35% support, and the minimum majority coalition (using only the delegated, not the approval, votes of all but the first coalition member) would be 3 candidates. Of course, if you use a reasonable power law instead of Zipf's law, the number of candidates would tend to be less, although the minimum majority coalition might be slightly larger. These numbers sound reasonable to me. I think the 1% cutoff would be a good rule, and I'm considering adding it to the definition of the standard version of SODA. What do others think? Jameson
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