[EM] CR v. AV, IRV &c

[Joe Weinstein]

CR v. AV, IRV &c


When I first checked into EM three years ago, my initial take was much as 
Bill Clark's: CR offers the voter obvious advantages over AV, IRV and other 
methods.  Namely, a voter who wants to use the vote in part to express a 
nuanced position - not confined to two or a few equal-spaced ratings - has 
that option.

Bill's critics are partly right - and their message is one of the first 
things EM discussions finally drove home to me.   Namely, no matter what 
info the voter has about other voters’ prospective behavior, a voter who 
himself wants ONLY to ‘strategize’ - i.e. get maximum expected gain from 
direct impact of his vote on choosing of the winner - must vote in CR as if 
in AV: give each candidate either full support or zero support.

However, Bill is quite right when he notes that in fact NOT all voters are 
interested ONLY in strategizing.  Some voters do want to use their vote, at 
least in part, to express nuanced positions.  They are not idiots.  In a 
typical mass election, probability is de facto zilch that any one person is 
in fact going to have any direct impact, so perhaps your major utility from 
bothering to vote is the satisfaction of expressing yourself as 'sincerely' 
as the voting method's ballot layout lets you do.

Over the past few years, various EM proposals, such as Forest Simmons’ MCA 
(Majority Choice Approval), have introduced readily understood and 
implementable methods which to significant degree allow voters to vote at 
once both strategically and expressively.

Bill, welcome to the discussion!

Joe Weinstein

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