[EM] Rational Voters discussion BBC Radio 4

There is an audio discussion, originally on BBC Radio 4 about a new book which deals with the perceived problem of ignorance of economics among voters, and whether this matters. There is a link at the end. It is not really about methods of voting. One of the speakers advocates the taking of

Re: [EM] advocacy by means of exit polls

I am aware of the controversy surrounding the 2004 U.S. Presidential election in Ohio and elsewhere. I live in Spain and won't comment on this more. Highly reliable was meant to mean that the result of the exit poll would nearly always be quite close to the result of a (correct) count of the

[EM] In Praise of Manipulation - interesting preprint

There's an interesting preprint by van Hees and Dowding about manipulation (link below), in which they argue that it sometimes could actually be beneficial. They define 2 types of manipulation, so-called sincere and transparent, which it is argued could be beneficial, and among other things they

[EM] more recent work on DSV than Cranor´s disse rtation?

Does anyone know of a resource about Declared Strategy Voting which is more up-to-date than Lorrie Cranor´s dissertation (below) http://lorrie.cranor.org/pubs/diss/ -- Thanks, Stephen __ LLama Gratis a cualquier PC del Mundo.

[EM] Gini and the Borda count

There seems to be a connection between the Gini function discussed here recently and the Borda Count. On all ballots, rankings are assumed complete and strict. Positional methods like the BC correspond bijectively (apart from a scaling factor) to the lists of n non-decreasing numbers of the form

[EM] using welfare functions in election methods

Nice to see a discussion of welfare in this context. Can we confirm that welfare is a synonym for utility? A starting model would be: given a voting system which is sufficiently expressive (perhaps a range system), assume that everyone just votes their welfare directly, and see where that gets

[EM] some questions about utility

Is anyone there willing to write an Electowiki page (or point us to an existing place) about the relationship between voting and utility/welfare? There seems to be nothing on the usual sites. It would be useful to have a summary of the evidence (for and against): - the relevance of utility - its

[EM] democracy conference in Madrid December 1-3

For anyone else in Madrid (Spain) there is a free conference this week on Problems of Democracy. There is no need to register, and it is free. All the sessions are in English. It is not specifically about voting methods, but no doubt they will come up. One of the lecture titles mentions

[EM] 2 questions on unanimity

I have two questions about unanimity, which could be expressed thus: if all the ballots are identical a copy of that ballot should be the result, perhaps with a need to pick the top candidate(s) off it, or to break a tie, afterwards. First, is there any seriously-proposed deterministic method

[EM] worldwide survey on democracy

This is an interesting worldwide survey carried out by the BBC and Gallup about: (i) is your country governed by the will of the people? (ii) are your elections free and fair? About 65% of people answer No to the first. There have been significant falls in the Yes answers to both questions in

[EM] unintended changes in pairwise preferences

This example shows something which seems undesirable, though is probably rare. It works both with ranked pairs and beatpath. Two slightly different sets of ballots give very different social orderings: a change in the pairwise X-Y preference on a couple of ballots also changes unrelated

[EM] exposure of flaws in voting machines

This is a bit peripheral, but might be of interest. Especially, those of you in the USA might like to look at this site, dedicated to the exposure of flaws in voting machines. These machines are actually in use. www.blackboxvoting.org Mostly, but not only about Diebold. I wonder how these

[EM] London newspaper campaigning for voting reform

According to recent issues of The Independent (serious London daily paper), there is now momentum building for voting reform for the House of Commons (first-past-the-post, single-member constituency at the moment). Of course this follows the recent election there. There are a number of articles

[EM] beatpath tiebreaking (question)

that we do not allow paths through eliminated candidates? Thanks. -- Stephen Turner. __ Renovamos el Correo Yahoo!: ¡100 MB GRATIS! Nuevos servicios, más seguridad http://correo.yahoo.es Election-methods mailing list - see http