[EM] ignoring "strength of opinion"

[James Gilmour]

> Abd ul-Rahman Lomax Sent: Tuesday, December 06, 2005 4:19 AM
> To: election-methods at electorama.com
> Subject: Re: [EM] ignoring "strength of opinion"
> 
> At 06:31 AM 12/3/2005, James Gilmour wrote:
> >So you think that just because I feel more strongly than you do in 
> >my liking for A and my dislike for B, just because I
> >shout about it more loudly than you do, and just because I mark my 
> >ballot paper with bigger numbers than you do, my view
> >of A and B should have more effect on the outcome than your view?
> 
> Mr. Gilmour is sloppy about "bigger," and does not seem to have 
> actually considered what a Range ballot would look like.

I'm afraid it is Abd ul-Rahman Lomax who is being "sloppy" here and in the rest of his post.  I can imagine very well
what a range ballot might look like.  But if Abd ul-Rahman Lomax goes back and looks at the messages that started this
discussion he will see that he has not addressed the issue raised.

The suggestion was made that range voting which took account of the differing strengths of feeling about the candidates
felt and expressed by various voters would maximise the social utility of the result.  Well it might - but I suggested
that any system that allowed different voters to have different overall effects in determining the result would be
undemocratic.

If we have a fixed range scale, say 1 = least preferred, 1000 = most preferred, it is perfectly obvious that every voter
will mark 1 for his/her least preferred candidate, 1000 for his/her most preferred candidate, and score the others
somewhere between the extremes.  Then all voters will contribute equally.  No problem.

But that was NOT what was actually suggested.  It was suggested that the scores used by the voters could (or should)
reflect the differences in their strengths of feeling, ie without obvious reference to any fixed scale.  So one voter
might range 1 to 10, another 1 to 100, and another 1 to 1000.  It was then suggested that these absolute differences
should be taken forward into the counting method and that that would maximise the social utility of the result.  Well it
might - but it would be undemocratic.

This is the issue to which there has been no answer from those who suggested it.  There is no problem with fixed scale
range voting (because the fixed scale 'normalises' the contribution of every voter), but that is not what was proposed
to maximise the social utility.

James Gilmour