[EM] Minimizing need for insincerity

[Bart Ingles]

MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote:
> Strategically needing to vote 2 candidates as equal when you
> don't consider them equal is unquestionably not as bad as
> strategically needing to _reverse_ a preference ordering. In
> fact, in a meaningful sense, the order-reversal is twice as
> bad.
> 
> But Blake is right when he says that, as regards the social
> results of the voting systems, a method that can require you
> to vote candidates equal, but doesn't require you to reverse
> orderings, is much more than half as good as a method that
> won't require you to reverse orderings or vote equal two candidates
> whom you don't consider equal.
> 
> That's because I believe it means something if people don't
> have to abandon their favorite anymore when helping a perceived
> needed compromise. For one thing, that means that it takes twice
> as many mistaken compromisers to give away an election. For

It also means that a sub-group would have to be twice as large in order
to overrule the wishes of its parent group.

Members of a group with a given preference order would likely have a
range of individual utilities toward its potential compromise
candidates.  A small faction at either end of the range, which might
feel that it is not giving up much by either abstaining or
order-reversal, has twice as much power if order-reversal is possible.

If swing voters tend to determine election outcomes, then the ability to
use order reversal doubles that power.