[EM] Random ranking, & other bogies

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

Matt--

You said that with wv, voters could have incentive to randomly rank
candidates between whom they're indifferent, and you said that somehow
that's a problem that could outweigh, for you, wv's advantages over
margins.

But to whom is that a problem, if someone is strategically tempted
to randomly rank some candidates between whom he's indifferent. Certainly it 
isn't a serious problem to that voter, since by your
assumption he doesn't care which of those wins. Is it a problem to another 
voter? How?

Blake says that random ranking is an easy way around the fact that
truncation can't steal victory from a CW. Sure, but order-reversal
would be more effective and make more sense. But, as we've discussed
here many times, order-reversal isn't likely to be used on a sufficiently 
large scale. And organizing a reversal campaign couldn't
be done in secret, and the intended victims would surely know about it
and would make it known that they weren't going to rank the would-be
reversers' candidate(s). The reversal then could only backfire.

Blake says that it's dogmatic to say that majority rule is important.
If Blake doesn't consider it an important standard, that doesn't mean
Blake's wrong; anyone can have his own standards. But to many people
majority rule is important. Blake suggests that it's arbitary to say
that "majority" means a majority of the voters. But that's how it's
always used, and it's the meaning that people consider important.

Of what relevance is a non-majority of people who don't even bother to
vote? But if few of those who voted consider a particular pairwise
comparison important enough to vote on, that says something.

Mike Ossipoff





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