Getting past the falsification issue

[Mike Ossipoff]

First, when I use the term "truncation", I mean voting a short
ranking that doesn't express all of the preferences that one
has. I don't call it truncation if one really has no preference
between one's unranked alternatives.

Tobin said that the Dole voters wouldn't be deterred from 
falsification unless they have a preference between Clinton
& Nader. True enough. If there's a natural circular tie,
and no Condorcet winner, then that could be true. But anything
that only holds when there's no Condorcet winner only holds
under less important conditions. What happens when each
alternative is beaten, by the sincere rankings, is less
important than what happens when there's a Condorcet winner.

But I'm not saying that what happens in a "natural circular
tie" isn't important: It's important, I claim, because
majority rule can still be upheld or violated, and the
lesser-of-2-evils problem can still be gotten rid of or
not gotten rid of--depending on whether we choose to
use compulsory falsification or default falsification, or
whether we do neither, and let non-falsification be the
default assumption. To me the considerations that I named
in this paragraph are important. I can't expect everyone
to agree with me on that, but I believe that most do.

But if Tobin doesn't consider those considerations important,
then what does his version offer to the voter, in terms
of standards or criteria? Is it something important enough
to justify giving up those considerations?

***

Another thing: As soon as you count preference votes that 
were never voted, you're parting ways with preference counting.
And when you do that, there's no longer any real justifiction
to continue to use the rankings.

What we've then got is a point system: You can say that it's
to the advantage of the anyone who'd indifferent to the
other two candidates other than his favorite to give them
both bad-points. Fine. A points system, but not a preference
count.

But why limit it to half prefernces. Why not give everyone
but your favorite a _whole_ bad-point? 

Of course that's equivalent to giving your favorite a good-point
and no one else a good-point. Plurality. We've come a long way
to arrive at our starting point.

But then why not, instead, allow the voter to give bad-points
to as many alternatives as he wants to, or, which would be
equivalent, allow him to give good-points to as many alternatives
as he wants to. That's the Approval system. The method would
then be Smith//Approval. But in my version of Smith//Approval,
the Approval count uses a 2nd balloting. I don't support
1-balloting Smith//Approval. I merely point out that it's
where the false-preferences lead to, via Smith//Plurality.

But, since we're doing points systems, why stop there? We
could let the voter give any alternative any points rating
he wants to, within a specified range, such as 0 to 10 points.
That would give voters the opportunity to express & have
counted finer gradations of ratings, and/or to strategicall
vote against or for the various candidates more flexibly.

These systems are what the false-preferences lead to. 

But all of these systems: Counting unvoted preferences compulsorily
or as the default option in Condorcet; 1-balloting Smith//Plurality;
1-balloting Smith//Approval;
1-balloting Smith//Flexible-Points-Assignment...

All these methods have something in common: None of them
get rid of the LO2E problem as Condorcet can. None of them
protect majority rule as Condorcet can. None of them meet
the GMC, LO2E-1 & LO2E-2 Criteria.


Mike


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