[EM] error

[Richard Moore]

MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote:

> Richard had said:
>
>     If your B vote has a probability k of helping B
>
> ...of making B win when he wouldn't otherwise have won?
>
> , it has a probability of
>     k/2 of hurting A and a probability k/2 of hurting C (B is just as likely
> to be tied with A as with C).
>
> I replied:
>
> But you said yourself it isn't meaningful to talk about how likely
> your vote is to change the winner from someone else to B without
> saying whether you're voting for that other candidate too.
>
> A is more favored than C is. Two people are voting for A for sure,
> now that you're joining the election. It doesn't seem reasonable
> to say that voting for B has to equally reduce A's & C's chances of
> winning.
>
> I add now:
>
> I forgot that we were talking about the 3001 voter example, rather
> than the 4-voter example. But this doesn't really bear on the original
> question of whether or not above-mean stratgy is valid with very
> few voters. To show that it isn't, a direct demonstration of that
> fact would be best.

Guess I did it again -- I didn't see this reply before answering your
earlier one. Well, that happens in non-real-time conversations (as
well as some real-time ones). Apologies again.

> By the way, Richard, are you aware that IRV is being heavily promoted
> around the U.S., and that at least 1 or 2 counties have already
> passed "enabling initiatives" for IRV, and that at least one county
> has enacted IRV, and that at least one state (Alaska) has an IRV
> initiative that has made the ballot (2002), and several other states
> are close behind, and that in at least some states the LWV has
> recommended IRV, and that an LWV IRV endorsement is about to be
> pushed through in California--and that all this debate of Approval
> strategy won't mean much if IRV, rather than Approval becomes the
> national single-winner reform? I'm just suggesting a re-direction
> of energy.

I'm not aware of all of those details but I am aware of the movement. I
became concerned when I read an article on it in the LA Times a few
months back, and that's why I'm here. A couple of other things helped
lead me here, like an article on www.technocrat.net about Condorcet
that I can unfortunately no longer locate.

I'm not discussing approval strategy for the sake of strategy but because
a thorough understanding of the strategies of various methods is part of
the key to understanding the strengths and weaknesses of those
methods. In fact my own recent exploration of approval strategy has
only made my belief in this method stronger. I'm trying to arm myself
with mathematics and won't be redirecting my energy away from that
goal. I don't like getting sidetracked down blind alleys but I was hoping
you'd be with me on this. Maybe you should try to see where I'm
heading; I've got a few more ideas to develop. We each have different
interests and talents and can all work on different aspects of the IRV
problem, from "cold" areas like logic and math to "hot" ones like
publicity and politics.

 -- Richard