[EM] ignoring "strength of opinion"

[rob brown]

On 12/6/05, James Gilmour <jgilmour at globalnet.co.uk> wrote:
>
> 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.
>

Now I'm a little confused.  I had always understood the ballots to be on a
fixed scale, say 1 to 10.  I also figured it was fair to assume that all
voters would give their favorite candidates a 10 and least favorite a 1.

However, even if this is true, giving any "in-between" candidate a 6 would
be foolish (or maybe I should say "non-strategic").  Any strategic voter
would vote for each candidate with either a 1 or a 10.  Voting a 6 for any
candidate would therefore be "reducing the strength of your vote".

In other words, if all voters were strategic, this would turn into approval
voting.

This reminds me of the saying that a lottery is a "tax on the math
impaired".  A system like this would be "semi-disenfranchisement of the math
impaired".  Or, "semi-disenfranchisement of those who place sincerity above
strategy".

Even approval voting is problematic in that, while it doesn't invite people
to be foolish quite as much as range voting, it does allow the voter who has
the best idea of how others will vote to have the most power.  So it is
"semi-disenfranchisment of the ignorant-of-the-latest-polls".  Not quite as
clever and catchy sounding as the saying about lotteries....
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