[EM] Differences of sincerity definitions

[LAYTON Craig]

Mike wrote (in part):

>2. Your definition allows a voter to vote an unfelt preference if
>not doing so would prevent voting a felt preference. But that's like
>saying that abstaining about a pairing is more insincere than voting
>an unfelt preference.

My definition allows the voter to do either.  If a voter really dislikes one
candidate (ie, prefers all candidates to that candidate), but is ambivalent
about the other candidates, then a vote which ranks all candidates should be
considered sincere, because it is the only way for her to express that
preference.  On the other hand, if she has one favourite, and one worst, and
is ambivalent about the others, then just voting the favourite first and
truncating the vote is also sincere.

>3. Your definition, but not mine, takes into account the fact that
>a rank-balloting system sometimes doesn't allow someone to rank
>candidates equal. But IRV and Borda are the only rank method proposals
>that I know of that don't allow equal ranking, and I'm not sure right
>now whether allowing for that fact would change their compliance with
>any of the criteria that stipulate sincere voting.

I was assuming that all rank-balloting systems do not allow equal ranking
(except for the truncating of votes so that all the unnumbered candidates
are equal).  How would you allow equal rankings? Would it be; 1,1,3,3,5 or
1,1,2,2,3 or something else?  That could prove a little too complicated.

Bart wrote:

>I also wonder how state or federal IRV results would be tabulated if
>counties are to continue to do the actual counting, as they do now. 
>Each county would have to determine its first-choice vote totals, then
>forward them to the state, which would then decide which candidate was
>eliminated, so that the counties could calculate the next-round totals,
>etc.

That's how we do it, and it doesn't cause too many problems (it's not
because of the volume of votes, either - my state counts 6 or 7 million
votes for Senate elections).  It can take up to two weeks to finalise Senate
results, but once they're finalised - they're finalised!

Oh, and I withdraw what I said some time ago about being able to vote
candidates equal / truncate votes in lower and upper house federal elections
in Australia.  Either my information was incorrect, or the electoral act has
been amended.  We have to number everybody.  There is some leeway for Senate
elections, if you choose to vote below the line, because of the requirement
to number so many candidates (up to 70 in some cases).