[EM] Approval Voting vs Instant Runoff Voting

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

Replying to Forest's letter about externalities: Good point.
Saying what should be said, not dirtying your hands by voting Democrat,
communicating with the other voters, the parties, and their backers,
those things are really often, maybe usually, more important than
your chance of affecting who wins.

Of course, just as there's only a tiny probability that my vote will
change the winner, my voice has to combine with lots of others to be
heard. Still, we'll be heard for sure, whereas there's practically
no chance that my vote will change the winner. So the communicative
value of your vote is much more important than its winner-determining
value, just as Forest pointed out. That's another reason why I
voted for Nader, and wouldn't ever vote Democrat. But I can also
justify that voting strategically even in terms of the election result
only. Nader's very small probability of being one of the 2 frontrunners,
vs Gore's near certainty of being one of the 2 frontrunners, is
outweighed by the merit (utility) difference between Nader &
Gore, vs the utility difference between Gore & Bush. So I claim that
my way of voting makes sense in terms of instrumental mathematical
strategy. An instrumental voter is a voter who's interested only in
the result of the current election. Regrettably, most progressives seem
to be instrumental voters. That's why, even though affecting the current
election result is the least important value of your vote, the
instrumental voters are the ones that we have to consider when
discussing voting system merit, because pretty much everyone is an
instrumental voter.

So, for instance, it makes sense to have criteria about instrumental
voters (like the defensive strategy criteria), and it makes sense
to calculate mathematical strategy for an instrumental voter in
Craig's example.

>You do make an excellent point that it is not possible to deduce what 
>voters will do in an approval election, even when both their utilities and 
>the information available to them are presumed to be quite precise.

When people follow their feelings, they'll probably approximate
utility expectation maximizing strategy. Probably if they err from it,
they'll err on the conservative (giveaway) side.

>any comparison of Approval with another method that starts from utilities 
>and known amounts of information ... any comparison of that type is not as 
>cut and dried as one would hope for.

Some important comparisons are completely cut & dried. Precise criteria,
like the defensive strategy criteria. They describe some absolute
guarantees, no ifs, precisely stated and important differences between
voting systems.

>
>Someone mentioned that some people are more willing to take risks than 
>others. Here's some thoughts along those lines: My reply; "If everyone 
>thought like I, then everyone would prefer Nader, and everyone would vote 
>safely by voting an 100% chance of showing support for him. If everybody 
>thought like I, the right man would win."
>
>Of course, I was teasing them a little with that response, because their 
>real question was intended to be, "What if every one had the policy of 
>giving support to a cause they actually believed in instead of worrying 
>about the small chance of their vote being pivotal in a lesser of two evils 
>gambit?"
>
>I'm not so sure that would be such a bad state of affairs in the long run.

True, either way the question is interpreted, if everyone were like
the principled voter who refuses to vote for the lesser of 2 sleazes,
then we'd have a much better society.

>And people are too quick to equate "lesser evil" with "greater good". We 
>like to think we're out-foxing the devil, but he's just toying with us.

That's right. I hear people give the lesser-evil justsification, and
I want to ask them if they realize that they're echoing what people
just like them have been saying for many decades? With no social
improvement? The only change has been that the Republocrats, including
the Democrats, have been shown that people will vote for them
in cynical resigned desperation, no matter how bad they are, with
the result that they've gotten much worse and worse.

The Democrat/Republican show is a good-cop/bad-cop scam. "Vote for
me, because who knows how bad _he'll_ be. (Probabaly about the same,
actually). And nearly all progressives fall for it every time.

>Who would have thought that Clinton and company, after all their populist 
>campaign rhetoric, would be the ones to dismantle welfare, ram through 
>NAFTA, try to fast track the MAI, send political refugee boat people back 
>to torture in China and Haiti, bomb civilian targets without apology, 
>de-rail the international land mine ban, scatter depleted uranium armor 
>piercing rounds all over the place, up the ante in Colombia, etc.

It didn't surprise me. In his '92 campaign, Clinton repeatedly kept
praising the civilian mass execution known as "Desert Storm", and
saying that he wanted to smash Cuba, apparently pleased about the
inexcusable suffering & death we've caused there with our embargo,
and all the military actions against Cuba.

Gore ran ads in 2000 in which he boasted that he was a Democrat who
voted for Desert Storm. Can any genuine progressive not be ashamed to
admit having voted for Gore or Clinton?

Mike Ossipoff

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