point systems use more information?

[Mike Ositoff]

Though I've heard about John Locke, my interest has been more
in the _mechanics_ of democracy. But that's an interestilng idea,
one that hadn't occurred to me, that the Favorite vs Compromise
and the Compromise vs Worst votes relate to long-term & short-
term goals. And of course that's true; The people who vote
Democrat are only considering optimizing this year's outcome,
while the person who voted for Nader, & for principle, is
doing something that will only bring benefit later. But when
I voted for Nader I didn't even consider results, since they
aren't likely in my lifetime. Just pure principle.

By the way, I tried to write to you directly, about a letter I
found in the recent archives, but my letter was returned. It was
about the requirement for short rankings. A fiction magazine here
elects a story for its annual award by conducting a Borda election
among its readership, in which only 3 rank-positions are allowed.

But, though that short ranking might ease their manual count-labor,
that would be the only reason for it. If long rankings are optional,
the tediousness of it isn't a problem. "Rank as many candidates
as you want to". One advantage of Condorcet(EM) is that short rankings
aren't going to mess up the results by giving the election to a
candidate because his supporters voted short rankings. No offensive
strategic motive for short ranking. Though I'm going to try not
to repeat as much as I used to, I always used to point out that
since truncation, in Condorcet(EM) can't create a strategy 
problem, can't force us to use defensive strategy, that method's
only potential strategy problem is the outright devious 
cheating strategy of order-reversal, which carries risk if
its prospective victims have reason to believe they should
defend against it.

As for long rankings encouraging tactical voting, maybe,
to the extent that the risk of offensive strategy isn't
as important, among one's lowest choices--but isn't that
more than made-up for by the sincere-voting people who also
vote long rankings with those same candidates near the bottom?
I like the idea that I can affect the election by my ordering
of my lowest choices.

Incidentally, someone objected to choosing the Condorcet winner,
based on the idea that many people will include someone near the
middle of their ranking without knowing enough about him/her,
figuring that an unknown is better than a known undesirable.
But the voters are adults, & we must respect their judgement
if they feel that a little-known candidate is sometimes better
than a known villain. To not elect the Condorcet winner
for that reason amounts to refusing to count a preference
that someone has voted because _we_ think they didn't use
good judgement. 

Mike Ossipoff