[EM] Responses to some of Forest's ideas

[Richard Moore]

Forest Simmons wrote:

> The East coast folks have an advantage because their results might
> discourage the West coast folks from even bothering to vote, for example.
> 
> The West coast folks have an advantage because they have more information
> about the preferences of other voters.
> 
> Which side of the country has a bigger advantage?


In Plurality, it depends on the situation. Replaying the 
2000 presidential race, but without the EC nonsense, we can 
see that a West Coast voter who prefers Nader might be more 
likely to vote for Gore instead once he sees how close the 
vote is across the rest of the nation. But if the race isn't 
so tight, you might indeed see some voters (from all 
parties) just give up.

In the former case, I'm not sure whether to give the 
advantage to the voters on the West Coast, or to the 
candidate (Gore in this case) who benefits from the 
situation (and to his constituents, no matter where they are 
geographically).

However, in Approval, I would say that voters on the West 
Coast do have a definite advantage when it comes to finding 
an optimum strategy, since they aren't simply trying to 
decide whether or not to betray their favorite but rather 
where to cut off their ballot.

Richard