To Blake re: strategy

[Blake Cretney]

MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote:

  > Blake said:
  >
  > 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.
  >
  > I reply:
  >
  > Since neither you nor I reside in Australia, that's a pointless thing
  > for us to speculate about. All 3 of the Australians that I've gotten

Some countries use plurality with successive elimination for things like
leadership conventions.  I think Americans use it for speaker of the
house.  Since the strategy is very similar, I think that awareness of
strategy in one would be good evidence of awareness of strategy in the
other.

  >
  > information from (2 by e-mail, one in person), none of whom know
  > eachother, told me that it's common for preferrers of small parties
  > to insincerely vote one of the big-2 parties' candidates in 1st place
  > , to avoid "wasting their vote". One of those Australian voters with
  > whom I spoke had just voted in that way in the most recent election.
  > But they all said that such voting is common in Australian IRV 
elections.

I don't consider those people a representative sample.  As well, their
strategy does not appear to be rational.  Of course, a widespread
strategy may be a problem without being rational.  If everyone thought
like Donald, approval would have a big problem as a result.  But until I
see some media coverage, I'm going to suspect that this is just a few
election method enthusiasts.

  >
  > I've made the effort to get some information about IRV strategy in
  > Australia. I realize that it's easier for you to question that than
  > to get information yourself.

Why should it be up to me to find evidence for a phenomenon that I do
not believe exists?

  >
  > Blake quotes me:
  >
  >> You said that you hope that FBC won't continue to be
  >> used, presumabley because you prefer the unattainable Strong FBC.
  >
  >
  > Blake replies:
  >
  > I don't understand why you're doing this presuming. I thought I was
  > fairly clear. Voters don't seem to like voting candidates above their
  > favourites, but nor do they like voting candidates equal to their
  > favourites.
  >
  > I reply:
  >
  > As I presumed, your Strong FBC is more important to you, which
  > makes you dissatisfied with FBC.

It's quite possible to want to avoid having people vote candidates equal
to their favourites without advocating Strong FBC.  Just as it is
possible to want to reduce crime without believing in some unmeetable
zero-crime criterion.

  >
  > Blake, we can't always have everything that we'd like.
  >
  > You said that voters don't like voting candidates equal to their
  > favorites, but I don't know of evidence from ordinary voters on that.

I don't think ordinary voters have much of an opinion on it, because
they've never heard of approval.  When they do get involved, they seem
to be drawn to IRV far more than approval, based on the strength of the
movements.  IRV advocates often dismiss approval because of the equal
vote issue.

  >
  > What you meant (I presume) was that some reform advocates express a
  > dislike for voting someone equal to their favorite. The IRVies, in
  > particular.
  >
  > Yes, because the IRVies don't understand that IRV will often give
  > voters a strategic need to vote someone over their favorite.

So they would suddenly stop disliking voting someone equal to their
favourite if they knew that IRV will sometimes give someone an advantage
by voting someone over their favourite.  Note that I don't say strategic
"need" because that's just a loaded word.  Any time anyone has a chance
at strategy, you could call it a need for strategy.  It's really only a
need if they need the candidate to win.

  >
  > Methods that pass FBC have none of the former, but a lot of
  > the latter. On average, in the proposed FBC methods, I should rate half
  > the candidates as equal to my favourite, unless the candidates are
  > skewed bad or good. So, FBC is at best a mixed blessing.
  >
  > I reply:
  >
  > It isn't entirely clear what that last sentence means. Which is
  > better, passing FBC or not passing FBC? Say there's a method that
  > meets your Strong FBC. Do you think it won't pass FBC? Passing FBC
  > doesn't mean not passing Strong FBC. Methods that fail Strong FBC

Once again, I never mentioned strong FBC.  But as for your question, I
think that a criterion should be judged by what passing it implies.  We
know (or suspect) that a method that passes FBC will be at least as bad
as approval on the equal-voting issue, unless it is one of the peculiar
strategy-free methods.  In the same way, a method that passes IIAC will
either not accept full rankings, or discard most of them.  So, even
though IIAC may sound good, I think that it is actually bad for a method
to pass it, since it implies other things that are not good.  I don't
think FBC is as clear cut as that, but I still call it a mixed blessing
at best.

---
Blake Cretney
http://condorcet.org