[EM] Burt L Monroe, "Voice of Reason" electoral method

Kevin Venzke stepjak at yahoo.fr
Fri Mar 7 21:04:02 PST 2003


Has anyone heard of, or know who this person is?  I
stumbled upon this "paper":

http://pro.harvard.edu/abstracts/004/004004MonroeBurt.htm
http://pro.harvard.edu/papers/004/004004MonroeBurt.pdf

At this message's bottom is the abstract for the
paper.

Anyway, he speaks rather favorably of a method called
"Voice of Reason (Monroe)."  I can't figure out what
it is from the paper.

He proposes a criterion "Nonelection of Irrelevant
Alternatives," and in a chart towards the end he says
it is satisfied by Plurality, Approval, IRV, Runoff,
and (his own?) "Voice of Reason."

He describes the criterion:
"A voting system satisfies NIA if there is no
[Myerson-Weber] voting equilibrium in which the set of
winners includes an alternative that is considered by
all voters to be the least preferable."

Sorry in advance if this guy is nuts, but it's got me
curious.

Kevin Venzke
stepjak at yahoo.fr



Burt L. Monroe. "Raising Turkeys: An Extension and
Devastating Application of Myerson-Weber Voting
Equilibrium." Paper prepared for delivery at the 2001
Annual Meeting of the American Political Science
Association, San Francisco, August 30-September 2,
2001.

Abstract:

I use Myerson-Weber (1993) voting equilibrium, and an
extension thereof, to show that most
theoretically-possible voting systems are subject to
"turkey-raising" — strategic voters overstating their
preferences for least-preferred alternatives.
Moreover, the incentives to turkey-raise are such that
even alternatives unanimously considered by all voters
to be the worst possible are elected in equilibrium
under most voting systems. For a voting system to not
be useless in this way, it must ask only for crude
preference information (as under plurality rule or
approval voting), or respond amonotically to complex
preference information (as under alternative vote), or
both (as under runoff systems and "near-plurality"
rules). Democratic institutions that do not satisfy
these criteria (e.g., Borda, anti-plurality rule,
Copeland, Dodgson, Black, Nanson, Coombs, etc., etc.,
as well as multiple-winner extensions of these) are
not just unused, but useless.


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