[EM] Condorcet Criterion for plurality.

[LAYTON Craig]

Norm Petry wrote:
>I agree with Craig.  Not expressing a preference, even if the voter has
one,
>is not insincere, and your reference to the court system shows why this is
>so.
>
>In most states (with the exception of Australia, and possibly a few
others),
>voting is not compulsory, unlike in courts of law, where testimony *is*
>compulsory.  If the idea that voting is not compulsory is extended to

Well, yes.  We're fascists down here about that whole compulsory thing
(Well, when you get your fine for not voting, you can just write back saying
that you were called interstate on short notice and you can get away with it
- it isn't very hard).  I think Greece is another one (who have only brought
it in over the last 10 or 15 years, I think).

>pairwise methods, it follows that voters should not be required to express
>preferences between certain pairs of candidates.  Individual voters may
>choose to abstain from participating in the group decision between certain
>pairs of candidates for a variety of reasons, only some of which may be
>insincere.  For example, a voter may feel that although they have a 'gut
>feeling' that A is better than B, they believe that this opinion is not
well
>founded, and prefer to leave the choice to other voters who (they hope) may
>be better informed.  I don't think this should be considered insincere.
>
>It is no more insincere to say 'I refuse to express a preference between A
>and B' than it is to say 'A is better than B' if the voter prefers A to B.

Yes! I've thought more about it and there are additional problems.  You see,
part of my point about translating voting systems into preferential ones was
for the purposes of classifying what is a sincere vote in each system.  What
about approval?  The preferential translation is: you vote with 1's and then
truncate your vote at any time.  However, you obviously don't like every
candidate you mark as much as every other one.  As a result, you're
expressing a false preference (under Mike's definition).  Cumulative is even
more complicated.  You might not express a preference between two
candidates, because you want to cumulate your votes on your favourite
(failing Mike's definiton).  You might give two candidates the same number
of points, even though you don't like them exactly the same (fails Mike's
def. again).  Part of the problem is that truncating your vote is part of
the voting design in Approval and (single winner) Cumulative.