Re. [EM] Sincere voting

Martin Harper mcnh2 at cam.ac.uk
Fri Dec 15 08:14:31 PST 2000


Markus Schulze wrote:

> to my opinion "sincerity" must include at least the following
> five properties:

I ask again - what is the difference between "unstrategic" and "sincere"
- your first three properties seem to me more about not being strategic
than being sincere. Which, to me, is a different thing.

More below:

> (3) For a voter with a given opinion there is a unique (but
> not necessarily deterministic) way of voting "sincerely."
>
> Example:
>
>   When FPP is used then the unique way of voting sincerely is
>   to make a cross-mark for that candidate who is the favorite
>   candidate due to this voter's sincere opinion.
>
>   Of course it is possible that a given voter has no unique
>   favorite candidate. In this case he will randomly or
>   arbitrarily decide which of his favorite candidates gets his
>   cross-mark.

Voters A, B, C, D, E all think that X and Y are equally good and best.

Voter A votes for X because he is higher up the alphabetical list.
Voter B votes for Y as the result of a coin toss.
Voter C votes for X by doing eeny-meeny-miney.
Voter D votes for Y because his friend prefers Y to X, and he's happy to
go with the flow.
Voter E votes for X because before the election campaign he said he
would vote for the candidate who's political broadcast he had seen most
recently. It was going to be Y, but 10mins before he went to vote he saw
a broadcast for X.

Which *one* of these methods is sincere?

> The reason why Mike Ossipoff defines "sincerity" the
> way he defines it is: He wants to be able to claim that
> it doesn't make any sense to vote "insincerely" under
> Approval Voting. Therefore he defines "sincerity" in
> such a way that even bullet voting is a "sincere"
> voting behaviour under Approval Voting.

And you, on the other hand, have no ulterior motives? That's nice. :-)



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