[EM] Minimizing need for insincerity

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

> > >What these criteria generally represent is the belief that voting
> > a
> > >less liked alternative over a more liked alternative is an extreme
> > >unacceptable strategy, but that voting two candidates as equal
> > when
> > >this is not your belief is hardly a problem at all.
> >
> > Wrong. SFC & GSFC are about conditions under which some
> > people, with complying methods, need no strategy at all.
>
>You have a point here.  I was being overly general.  My criticism
>only applies to WDSC, FBC, and SARC.  Not to SFC, GSFC and SDSC.

It still isn't clear what your criticism was claiming. Sometimes
it isn't possible to guarantee complete freedom from strategy
for anyone: When SFC's & GSFC's conditions don't apply. Or when
the method doesn't comply with SFC & GSFC. So what, then, is
your objection to having criteria that say what can still be
said about minimizing need for need for defensive strategy, under
less ideal conditions or with different methods that don't meet
SFC & GSFC? Besides, in another way, FBC is a particularly strong
criterion, since the protection that it requires is for
every voter in every situation.

But, as I said, I quite agree that SFC & GSFC are the most
ambitious of the defensive strategy criteria, and that's why
I like Condorcet as my 1st choice, if it were up to me what voting
system to enact.

> > 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
> > another thing, support for those compromisers' favorite will no
> > longer be completely concealed, as it is now.
> >
> > To me it means a lot to say that, for the first time, everyone
> > would be feel free to vote for their favorite.
>
>You are making an emotional argument based on how you like to vote.

Wrong. You didn't read that last paragraph. It's not about
how I like to vote, but rather about how I don't like other people
to feel that they have to vote. Yes, my valuation of the criteria
is based on that. Voting is what this is about, you know. When
we try to divorce outselves from the strategy problems that voters
are observed to have, then we get into that condition that I
said that most academic authors are in.

>If all voters felt the same way, then this might be a good argument,
>but I doubt this is the case.

Don't take my word for it. Look at any U.S. newspaper these days.
You'll find exhortations for people to abandon their favorite and
vote for a lesser-evil, in order to beat someone who is allegedly
worse than the lesser-evil. Everyone I talk to who's going to vote
for Gore says they're forced strategically to abandon their favorite
in order to vote for lesser-evil Gore. That's been true in every
election: Everyone I talk to who's voting Democrat is doing so
not because they like the Democrat, but only because they say
they must dump their favorite in order to vote for a lesser-evil.

>It seems to me that the popular
>resistance to approval voting is largely caused because people don't
>want to vote candidates as equal to their first choice, and are
>willing to occasionally have to abandon their first choice to avoid
>this.

What popular resistance to Approval? You mean the work of the
CVD IRVies? The IRVies haven't accepted the fact that sometimes
there will be strategic need to dump a favorite in IRV.
IRVies don't like Approval because they want to be able to
express all of their preferences, apparently not understanding that
it isn't enough to express preferences and then not have them
counted.

You can theorize whatever you want to about how the American
public would react to Approval. But one thing for sure: They
wouldn't completely abandon their favorites anymore.

>So although for emotional reasons you think "abandoning" a
>favourite is more than twice as bad as insincere equal ranking, many
>people, for emotional reasons, may believe that equal ranking is
>almost as bad as reversal.

The IRVies do seem to feel that way. Look, if you're saying the
people would rather have Condorcet than Approval, that would be
fine with me; I too prefer Condorcet. The only problem with rank
balloting is that there can be such disagreement on how to count
ranked ballots. Russ expressed disappointment about that. And
Markus wants to drop all the defensive strategy criteria, and,
for measuring protection of sincere voting, to use only his
criterion which is met only by his method.

Letting voters express all their preferences sounds good, but
not if the preferences aren't reliably counted.

>
>--snip--
>
> > >Now, I think that a reasonable test would take all these
> > strategies
> > >and choice limitations into consideration.  That way, a method
> > with a
> > >lot of the strategies Mike ignores
> >
> > Blake, if there's a strategy need that I've ignored, won't you
> > tell me about it?
>
>You're right that you don't entirely overlook the problem of
>insincere equal ranking, because you do have criteria that take this
>into consideration.  On the other hand, you clearly have criteria
>WDSC, FBC, and SARC that do not.  Certainly in isolation, you would
>agree that this would be a problem.  That the methods do not measure
>level of strategy as a whole, but only certain strategies.

You mean "the criteria" rather than "the methods". Yes, I admit
that different criteria measure measure different things, as needed for 
different
situations and different methods. Sometimes the best that can be
done is preventing need for order-reversal. What's wrong with having
criteria about that?

>
>Now, I suspect that you would make an argument along the lines that
>if you use all the criteria together, you are checking for a wider
>range of strategy, and that therefore, when you evaluate a method
>against all your criteria, you can get a good general idea of its
>level of strategy problems.

That's true.

>
>But I deny that this is true.  Consider a method like IRV.  It fails
>the equal-rank favouring criteria while approval passes them.  This
>is not a general view of its strategy level, but reflects the fact
>that WDSC, SARC, and FBC only check for extreme cases of
>order-reversal, paying no attention to lesser cases and to insincere
>equal ranking.

Approval and IRV both fail SDSC, SFC, & GSFC. When comparing 2
methods, it's most useful to use criteria that one of them passes
and the other fails. I claim therefore that SDSC, SFC, & GSFC
wouldn't be useful for comparing Approval and IRV.

For comparing Approval to IRV, since, for both methods, we don't
have gurarantees against need for insincere equal ranking (Well,
IRV doesn't let you equal rank candidates for whom you vote, and
forces you to order-reverse instead), and we don't have guarantees
that no strategy of any kind will be needed (Though I suppose we
could write a Sure Loser Criterion for IRV :-), so then let's
ask what _can_ be guaranteed by at least one of those 2 methods.
Approval has guarantees against need for order-reversal that
IRV doesn't have.

If you think that IRV offers important guarantees relating to
the reduction of need for insincere voting to defeat a greater-evil,
then would you write criteria about them and post the criteria?

>
>On the other hand, just like approval, IRV fails your other group of
>criteria, since these methods in effect test for the Condorcet
>criterion.

Wrong. Tideman(m) meets the Condorcet Criterion, but fails every
one of the defensive strategy criteria.

Methods that meet BC meet Condorcet's Criterion, but not the
other way around.

>By applying this battery of tests you might come away
>with the impression that approval is more strategy resistant than
>IRV.  Maybe this is the case, but if you look at the basis on which
>each criteria makes its decision, you can't say that they provide any
>evidence to this effect.

I don't know what that last sentence means. If you're claiming
that the defensive strategy don't measure protection from need
for insincere voting to defeat a lesser-evil, then would you
explain why you believe that to be so?

To compare Approval & IRV, I ask what one guarantees that the
other doesn't guarantee.

>
> > I don't deny that a great risk of a small violation would have
> > to be balanced against a small risk of a great violation.
> >
> > Do you have any examples where we have to make that choice?
>
>Clearly approval has more equal ranking problems then other methods,

The only reason why IRV doesn't have equal ranking problems is
because it forbids equal ranking of ranked candidates, and forces
people to order-reverse instead. If you mean that Approval
requires equal-voting more often than IRV requirees order-reversal,
my criteria are about absolute guarantees--what will never be
necessary with a certain method? If you want to write a criterion
that tries to somehow quantify how much more often Approval needs
strategy than IRV does, you're welcome to do so. Write one about
when IRV guarantees against any need for strategy. Under what
conditions can you make that guarantee? If you're the one saying
that IRV offers that guarantee under some reasonable conditions,
then write one or more criteria about that. Instead of just hinting
that Approval's strategy need is more frequent than that of IRV.


>but also has no order-reversal for first candidate.  These problems
>have to be traded against each other.

You're referring to FBC,
and SARC. But Approval also offers WDSC's guarantee, which is about
all reversals, not just those involving one's 1st choice.

Again, if you think something important can be said about the
conditions under which IRV can guarantee no need for any
strategy, or any need for reversal or equal ranking, then you
should write a criterion about that guarantee so that we can
judge how important it sounds.

Mike Ossipoff

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