Misdemeanor vote indecision

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

>Mr. Ossipoff wrote in part --
>
>But changing how you intend to vote, surely that's only a misdeme[a]nor.
>
>X, it later turns out, was going to lose. But then I decided to rank
>X last instead of first, and he won. No one has tampered with ballots.
>No one has peeked at the ballot-box. The rankings were reported after
>the election.
>---
>D- How will Mr. Ossipoff detect that some choice *was going to lose* unless
>such choice actually loses (especially in a mass public election-- such as
>the circa 105 million votes for U.S. President in 2000) ???

I made that clear. In a small committee vote, _after the results have
been made available to the voters_, you might notice that your X
, who won, would have lost if you hadn't changed your vote at the
last minute, and moved X from 1st place to last place.

>
>How will Mr. Ossipoff detect that ONLY *his* vote changed the results ???  
>By
>more election law felonies ???

Unless the law has changed since I checked last, it isn't a felony
to report election results. So you'd detect how your vote affected
the outcome from the reported count results.

>
>Are ANY of the other voters also playing the reverse order insincere/
>strategy voting game (or are they just being naive and voting sincerely --
>such that ONLY Mr. Ossipoff among ALL the voters is playing the insincere/
>strategy voting game) ???

Excuse me, Demorep, no mention was made of a strategy game. I merely
said that you might notice after the count results are available,
that your change in how you decided to vote changed the outcome in
a way opposite to the way in which you changed your vote (how your
actual ballot differs from how you'd previously intended to vote).

>
>Is choice X elected by a majority of the voters (whether sincere or
>insincere) ???

I don't know if that example can be written so that X, when he wins,
is the indicated favorite on a majority of the ballots.

But either way, with IRV, your change of vote can cause the outcome to 
change in the opposite way, and that shouldn't happen.

Mike Ossipoff



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