[EM] Request for criticism

[LAYTON Craig]

Martin Harper wrote (in response to Rob LeGrand):

>That's a reasonable starting point, but you should be aware it is a HUGE 
>simplification. Ignoring manipulability, Cardinal Ratings is a perfect 
>system.

If your test for the perfect system is a Cardinal Ratings/Utility Sum count,
then that statement is quite a tautology.

>Which criteria are these, btw? - from the methods you've picked, I'd 
>assume the Condorcet Criterion - yet you include Borda and Copeland - odd.

Copeland passes CC, does it not?

Incidentally (this is to Rob), what are the specifics of your Borda score? I
would assume the conventional 24 points for 1st preference, 0 points for
25th preference.  How are draws dealt with?  This has always been a problem
in Borda - draws are not traditionally allowed, because if you allow them,
you create problems eg. A=B=C>D=E.  D and E get 0 points, but what about
A,B,C?  To really test Borda, you should force the voter to choose between
drawn candidates (ie randomise), because this is how the system works in
practice.

>I don't think this is the case. I know that winning a million pounds 
>would be a million times better than winning a pound 

That isn't the case.  Utility in almost all areas is subject to a marginal
decline.  This is particularly the case for material possessions.  Although
this factor doesn't have much (if any) impact in single winner elections in
comparison to multiple winner elections (Forest estimated declining marginal
utility rates in his Proportional Approval Voting).

>- yet according to 
>your 0-5 rating system my preferences aren't that fine. Seems odd.

0-5 seems reasonable.  Predicting utility outcomes is an inexact science.
At this point I'd like to point out that I still have some difficulty with
the expected utility value concept (or "honest" cardinal ratings).  What
happens if one group of voters are very bad estimaters of their expected
utilities?  It is assumed that this will be cancelled out by another group
of voters, but it's most definately possible (even likely) that the bad
estimaters have something in common with one another, and may indeed have
similar political beliefs.