New SW method: Weighting with elimination & renormalization

[Mike Ossipoff]

Mike York's proposal is an interesting one, and I don't believe I've
ever heard it proposed before.

It seems to me, at this point, that it wouldn't get rid of the lesser-
of-2-evils problem. What if Clinton got the lowest initial point score,
and therefore immediately got eliminated, and Nader turned out to not
be able to beat Dole? Same problem as MPV (aka Hare's method).

As for whether it's subject to tactical manipulation, I take that
to mean what I call "offensive strategy". MPV is virtually 
invulnerable to offensive strategy, but MPV needs drastic defensive
strategy even without any offensive strategy being used. So invulnerability
to offensive strategy isn't enough to make a method a good one.

By "drastic defensive strategy", I mean voting a less-liked alternative
equal to or over a more-liked one. 

Anyway, if a Nader voter wants to be sure of helping Clinton beat
Dole, then he/she had better, in York's method, give Clinton a
maximum point score, insincerely voting Clinton equal to Nader.
If the uncertain polling information indicates that Clinton is
in danger of elimination & Dole could then win.

Sure, York's Weighted Elimination gets rid of the lesser-of-2-evils
problem to a greater degree than does MPV, but it still doesn't
get rid of it, since, in order to help lesser-evil Clinton defeat
Dole, we have to abandon voting Nader over Clinton. The lesser-of-2-
evils problem is still there in York's Weighted Elimination.

At least a voter doesn't have to vote Clinton _over_ Nader, as he/she
would have to in MPV, but why use a method that requires drastic
defensive strategy when there's a method that doesn't. And when,
in fact, there's a method that doesn't need any defensive stratgy
at all under all plausible & reasonable conditions?

Steve, will you relay these comments about York's Weighted Elimination
to Mike York, and to his whole mailing list?

Tell him I said it's very unlikely that he'll find any 1-balloting
method that gets rid of the lesser-of-2-evils problem & avoids
need for defensive strategy & protects majority rule as well as
Condorcet's method.

If he was concerned about that example that chose outside the Smith
set, then tell him about Smith//Condorcet.


Mike




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