[EM] Complete voting

LAYTON Craig Craig.LAYTON at add.nsw.gov.au
Mon Dec 18 15:05:04 PST 2000


Firstly, Mike,

I may have made some serious errors.  I'll defer on the criteria question
for the time being.

Markus,

you wrote:

>Could you please give an example for each of these four types
>of votes?
>
>Do you mean that bullet voting is sincere under Approval Voting
>or do you mean that bullet voting is sincere under any election
>method?

Bullet voting is sincere under any election method (with certain provisos).
Examples of types of votes with the preferences A>B=C>D:

In IRV where you cannot indicate equal preferences, the following votes will
be sincere;
A1
A1, B2, C3, D4 (or without D4, as they are equivalent)
A1, C2, B3, D4 (or without D4)

Sincere voting in Approval would be either A or A, B, C.  In approval, a
sincere-strategic vote would be when you use the available information about
the election to decide between these two options (ie, B and D are the
front-runners, so you vote ABC; or if A and C are the front-runners, you
vote A).

Insincere-strategic is fairly straightforward.  In plurality, B and D are
the frontrunners, so you vote B, even though you prefer A.

An insincere non-strategic vote is any vote where you have a sincere
preference, but for some particular reason, or just because you don't care
very much, you do not follow your sincere preference (or if you have no
sincere preference but vote anyway).  Say in IRV again; the candidates are
listed B,A,C,D and you "donkey vote" down the ballot paper B1,A2,C3,D4.
Donkey voting has been known to sway the result of an election from time to
time (there is a case during the 1950's anti-communist era, where a party
who's main platform was banning the communist party won a seat on the
preferences distributed by the elimination of the Communist candidate,
because they were listed 1,2 on the ballot paper).

I had previously posted about the example of a man in Australia encouraging
voters to put both the major parties equal last.  Most people would have a
preference between the major parties, but might want to vote the major
parties equal last to make a point about the tyranny of a bi-partisan
system.  This is an insincere (non-strategic) vote, even though there are
good reasons to do it.  There has since been an ammendment to the electoral
act so that you can't vote like this (I think).



More information about the Election-Methods mailing list