Blake's Example

[Mike Ositoff]

A few days ago Blake posted an example to show that, even
with VA, voters could benefit by not ranking their favorite
1st.

For 1 thing, I've been quite clear, in my discussion of the
1st Choice Criterion, that I'm talking about people being
forced to abandon their favorite as a defensive strategy.
That means for protecting the win of a CW that you need to
beat someone worse, or the achieve something that a majority
wants (including someone's defeat).

Blake didn't say anything about his example having a CW, and
so we can assume that it's a sincere, natural cyclical majority.
So much for there being a CW-protecting defensive strategy
problem.

Abandoning favorite to gain a majority wish? Sure, those voters
Blake named could do that to accomplish that. But the fact
that that's _one_ way it could be done isn't really relevant
to what I've been saying. I'm talking about voters being
forced to use drastic defensive strategy, not about them
choosing needlessly to.

In VA, any majority can get its way without giving up 1st place
position for anyone's favorite. In that particular example,
if I remember it correctly, the C voters vote B over C to make
B win, to defeat A who'd have otherwise won. But the majority
who don't want A to win have an easy way to ensure it: Don't
vote for A. If you don't want A to win, don't vote for him. You
have a problem with that?

Mike