[EM] Responses to some of Forest's ideas

[Rob LeGrand]

Forest wrote:
> Personally, I have little sympathy with these kinds of regrets.
> The kind of regret Mr. LeGrand has been talking about (in the context of
> CW versus Approval winner) is more or less similar to the kind of regret
> illustrated by these examples (regretting one's inability to extract
> strategic advantage due to lack of information about others preferences). 

I'm not interested in regret for its own sake.  I only want to encourage
sincere voting as much as possible.  Voters who regret that they didn't vote
insincerely will probably remember and vote differently in the next election. 
I believe I read that public use of Bucklin failed because of regretful voters
who learned their lesson.

> Putting aside regrets and other emotions, let's think of results:
> Approval does as well or better than Condorcet in zero information cases.

I disagree.  According to my simulations, which were designed to measure how
well methods pick winners when voters are sincere (a rather modest goal, but
useful in this case), Approval does worse than the worst Condorcet method.  The
only methods worse for SU than Approval that I've tested, from best to worst,
are Coombs, IRV, plurality and bullet (anti-plurality).  Approval does about as
well as Bucklin.  Approval's SU performance only gets worse when voters use it
strategically.

> I have a hard time understanding why people are afraid of the benign
> strategic aspect of Approval.

I'm not afraid of it.  I do see it as benign, since it allows a sincere
Condorcet candidate to rise to the top when voters are well-informed; other
comparably simple methods such as plurality and bullet often don't allow that. 
I think Approval's simplicity makes up for its several disadvantages.

=====
Rob LeGrand
honky98 at aggies.org
http://www.aggies.org/honky98/

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