[EM] Efforts to improve on CR's strategy

[Ken Johnson]

>Date: Sat, 22 May 2004 23:26:40 -0500 (EST)
>From: Adam H Tarr <atarr at ecn.purdue.edu>
>  
>
>...  My first guess at a strategy:
>
>1) Identify the two frontrunners, and pick your favorite among them.
>2) Give your favorite frontrunner a 10, your less favored frontrunner a 0, and 
>everyone else a 5.
>
>This maximizes your impact on the important contest - the one between the 
>frontrunners.
>
>  
>
Adam,

That certainly makes sense if only two candidates have a significant 
chance of winning. But in general, why limit it to two front-runners? 
What if there are 5 candidates who are likely to win (you may not know 
which is more likely), and 5 other candidates who are just jokers doing 
a publicity stunt? Clearly, it would be advantageous to vote in such a 
way that the jokers have no effect on the election. (The vote counting 
procedure could be modified so that simply abstaining on some candidates 
has this effect.) But would you have any incentive to rate the "real" 
candidates insincerely?

If you're voting strategy is based on who you think is or is not likely 
to win, that suggests an IR-type approach, such as Brian Olson's 
"Instant Runoff Normalized Ratings" (IRNR),
http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2004-May/012885.html
The basic idea is to normalize the ratings, disqualify the candidate 
with the lowest average rating, and repeat until there's only one left. 
Is there a way to beat the system (strategically) with this method?

Ken Johnson