[EM] ignoring "strength of opinion"

[Steve Eppley]

Hi,

[Rob Brown suggested I post his unintentionally private message 
to me and my reply.  Here they are.]

Rob wrote to me:
  On 12/1/05, Steve Eppley <seppley at alumni.caltech.edu> wrote:
  > I agree with both of Rob's messages so far on this topic
  > except for one sentence, which I've included in this
  > excerpt above.He wrote that collecting some strength of
  > opinion info cannot be avoided, but I see no strength info 
  > in votes that are orderings of the alternatives.
 
  What I meant was that condorcet methods ignore the 
  difference between, say, ranking A five positions above B, 
  vs. ranking A directly above B. Both count as simply "you 
  prefer A to B", while something like borda count would 
  consider the former to mean "you *much* prefer A to B". 

I replied to Rob:
  Right.  That's a (dubious) interpretation by Borda, not 
  preference info contained in the voters' orderings.

  Perhaps someday we'll have the tech to scan people's brains 
  to measure preference intensities.  Not that I'd 
  necessarily favor that for public elections; for one thing, 
  stronger intensities might correlate with being less 
  reasonable.  Elections are just a crude instrument, so I 
  think that what matters is that voting procedures create 
  incentives for social accountability by the politicians, 
  donors, activists, media, pollsters, etc.

--Steve