[EM] extending Myerson's test--more policy positions

[David Catchpole]

I'll announce the approval/cumulative voting strategy that I think is
useful for voters with little information about other voters. There are n
candidates. Vote for the n/2 or n/2 + 1 candidates you most prefer.

Any other suggestions?

On Fri, 17 Mar 2000, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote:

> It's sometimes said that, with Approval, if you vote for someone,
> it's to your advantage to vote for everyone whom you like more.
> I make that suggestion whenever I talk about Approval strategy:
> "Vote for the lesser-evil you'd vote for in Plurality, and for
> everyone whom you like more."
> 
> But, if frontrunner probabilities can take on any values at all,
> it isn't strictly true that it's always to your advantage to vote
> for everyone whom you like better than someone else for whom
> you've voted. There can be situations where your best strategy
> instead involves "skipping". I said yesterday that at least one
> author said that the combinations of frontrunner probabilities
> creating that situation are so unreasonable that the possibility
> should be ignored, or might as well be ignored, for strategy
> purposes. I don't have a copy of it, so I can't quote his exact
> words here. If you want to find out who said that, and exactly
> how he worded it, it's probably in Weber's article, "Approval
> Voting", in the abovementioned issue of _Journal of Economic
> Perspective_. In the unlikely event that it isn't in his article,
> it could be in Myerson's article.
> 
> It can be shown that if each candidate is assigned his "individual
> frontrunner probability", his probability of being one of the
> 2 frontrunners, and if the frontrunner probability of a pair is
> gotten as the product of the 2 candidates' individual frontrunner
> probabilities, then maximization of utility expectation always
> means that if we vote for someone we vote for everyone whom we
> like more. Several authors consider the individual frontrunner
> approach a reasonable thing to use, and suggest it for calculating
> strategy.
> 
> Now, if we accept that we should vote for everyone whom we like
> better than Joe, if we vote for Joe, then everyone voting for
> a corrupt candidate improves his utility expectation if he also
> votes for that candidate's uncorrupt counterpart at the same
> policy position. Even if everyone at that policy position voted
> for the corrupt one, he does better, expectationwise, if he also
> votes for that candidate's uncorrupt counterpart. Then the best
> that the corrupt candidate can do is tie with his uncorrupt
> counterpart. So a clear victory for that corrupt candidate
> won't happen if each voter who helps him changes his strategy
> in a way that would improve his expectation even if the change
> were unilateral.
> 
> ***
> 
> I'd better send this, and then send the IRV part immediately
> subsequently.
> 
> Mike Ossipoff
> 
> ______________________________________________________
> Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
> 
> 

--------------------------------------------------------------------
"Never ascribe to conspiracy what can be put down to stupidity"- DJ No MC