Truncation with Condorcet

[Mike Ositoff]

On Thu, 6 Aug 1998, Blake Cretney wrote:

> Why would anyone ever sincerely truncate a ballot under
> Condorcet?  Wouldn't it make much more sense to fill
> in all the other candidates randomly.  After all, this
> can only help you're candidate, and if you consider
> the others to be equal, there's no risk.
> 

Lots of reasons why people truncate non-strategically.

Maybe someone hasn't heard anything about any but a few 
candidates. It doesn't help his favorite(s) to rank lower
choices (it doesn't hurt them either). So, that voter would
have no reason to bother including the unknowns in his ranking.

Maybe he's in a hurry to vote quickly & get back to other
things that he needs to do that day. It seems to me that
we've had elections with up to 20 candidates--in an open
primary for a vacancy. Lots of people wouldn't bother ranking
all of them, even though they might have sufficient information
to.

I'd refuse to rank really despicable candidates, even if there
are others that are even more despicable. Just as I don't vote
for "lesser-evils" now, I wouldn't rank them in a rank-balloting
election. (But I'd be glad to have rank-balloting so that I could
order the candidates who _do_ deserve my vote. And most voters
_do_ vote for lesser-evils, and that popular need to support
lesser-evils is probably one of the main reasons why a better
single-winner method is needed).

What are some of the reasons for that refusal? Principle is
the main one for me. It would make me feel dirty to vote
for the sleazes that people call "lesser-evils". But it could
also be done as a form of communication. Communicating to
lesser-evil voters that not everyone feels that need, showing
them that there's a principled nucleus that they could
add themselves to. Communicating with major partys & their
candidates & voters, and to the media, that not everyone is 
willing to validate those parties & candidates. Even with
rank-balloting, you'd make a stronger statement by not ranking
Clinton than you could make by merely ranking Nader over him.

Mike Ossipoff





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