[EM] To Blake, re: strategy

[Rob Lanphier]

On Mon, 11 Feb 2002, Blake Cretney wrote:
>    MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote:
>  > Well, I've said that one thing that I don't like about IRV is that
>  > its mathematical strategy is exceptionally difficult, requiring
>  > estimate of many probabilities. Difficulty doesn't mean that people
>  > won't try to guess, of course. Insincere voting is common in
>  > public IRV elections. The fact that it may be erroneous strategy
>  > doesn't seem to make it any better. People are dumping their
>  > favorites, which I don't like, however un-understandable the
>  > strategy is.
> 
> I wonder if anyone can find a newspaper or magazine article or editorial
> that hints at some awareness of strategy in IRV.  I doubt it, although
> I've been wrong before.  Note that parties sometimes have how-to-votes
> that demonstrate vote trading, or an attempt to avoid strong opponents
> in the legislature.  But that's a different issue.

I think the strategy issue manifests itself in a couple of ways:
1.  Tendency of voters to engage in tactical/insincere voting
2.  Tendency of candidates/parties to position their candidate in the
strategically best position of the political spectrum based on voting
system.

While we can argue about the likelihood of #1 until we're blue in the
face, I'm much more interested in #2.  At least in the U.S., the political
parties have gotten *very* sophisticated with regards to this, and it
wouldn't surprise me if Australia is very similar.  

Strategically speaking under IRV, a political party is still better off
shooting for the better half of a 51/49 split than they are shooting
straight down the middle.  Under any of the pairwise methods, Approval,
and even Borda (I think), the only winning strategy is shooting for the
middle 50%. 

Whether or not someone in Australia has actually done a magazine article
on either #1 or #2 is doubtful, but I too would love to see it. 

Rob
----
Rob Lanphier
robla at eskimo.com
http://www.eskimo.com/~robla