[EM] Re: Chris: Approval vs IRV

[Kevin Venzke]

Chris,

Butting in again...

 --- Chris Benham <chrisbenham at bigpond.com> a écrit :
> > [MO]
> > With IRO something _does_ prevent people from registering their support
> > for a less winnable alternative: The fact that while their vote is
> > on their favorite, a needed compromise might get eliminated, resulting
> > in the victory of one's most despised last choice.
> >
> > [AL]
> > Nope. That is just your speculation. Ask any Australian of any political
> > persuasion and you'll find that this just isn't a factor in the way
> > people actually vote here (as opposed to the way parties plan their
> > campaigns). <snip>

I think that parenthetical bit is important, since I claim nomination disincentive
is IRV's biggest problem (and also that of FPP, cumulative voting, DAC/DSC...).

> Why will small parties prefer IRV to  Approval?

It's OK with me if unwinnable candidates don't like Approval.  If they turn out to
be winnable, at least 1) it will show up in the Approval results, and 2) people
voting for those candidates and also their compromise candidate(s) cannot thereby
throw the election to their least favorite.

>  From the point-of-view of voters that aren't interested in 
> strategising, Approval doesn't "guarrantee" anything.

I don't follow here.  Order-reversal never helps in Approval.  That isn't a 
valuable guarantee to a sincere voter?

> In the case of  IRV, the voter might SOMETIMES be, as you say, be 
>  "strategically forced" (in the setting of a US presidential election)
> to Compromise and  falsely vote Middle above Favourite. But that is 
> versus having  to falsely vote compromises equal to sincere
> Favourite in Approval, ALL THE TIME.  That is fine if you think that 
> order-reversal is terrible, but order-compression is nothing.
> But if  you consider them both bad, and order-reversal  is only about 
> two or three times worse than order-compression; then  IRV
> looks like the much more attractive  way of voting.

I think nomination disincentive is ten times worse than order compression.
I claim again that Favorite won't even enter an IRV election without some 
ability to coordinate his supporters' voting.

> Consider these  further categories of voters:
> (3) voters who are not be interested in strategy, and so just want  a 
> clear-cut way of voting sincerely. Under IRV, this category
> would be much larger than it is under Purality, when voters appreciate 
> IRV's "majority for solid coalitions" and  Condorcet Loser
> guarrantees. This is the group who would not be Approval fans.

I can't picture these voters, who just want to vote sincerely, and think IRV
has better guarantees than Approval.  I would think that valuable guarantees
would have to be something about the way a sincere vote will be counted.  If
you're just voting sincerely in IRV, without any direction from a party, you 
couldn't expect that you would be able to take advantage of Majority, for
instance.

> (4) well informed  strategists, who don't mind  Compromise-strategy 
> order-reversal. ("betraying" their favourite).This group
> has no real reason to prefer Approval over IRV.

These would be the Nader voters who cheerfully voted for Gore.  Yes, to those
people I imagine it wouldn't make any difference whether Favorite entered the
race to begin with.

Kevin Venzke
stepjak at yahoo.fr



	

	
		
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