[EM] 10% as much as possible... :)

[rob brown]

On 12/7/05, Warren Smith <wds at euclid.math.temple.edu> wrote:
>
> >Rob Brown:
>
> How much do you want your vote to count (check one):
>
> ( ) As much as possible
> ( ) 90% of as much as possible
> ( ) 80% of as much as possible
> ( ) 70% of as much as possible
> ( ) 60% of as much as possible
> ( ) 50% of as much as possible
> ( ) 40% of as much as possible
> ( ) 30% of as much as possible
> ( ) 20% of as much as possible
> ( ) 10% of as much as possible
>
> --amusing.


It was meant to be amusing.  It represents exactly what happens with range
voting, but in an upfront way.  People would simply laugh at it --
rightfully so, because it is absurd.

In range voting, you have hidden it under the guise of "fully expressing
one's preferences".  They feel they are doing more, while in reality they
are doing less, and hurting their own cause.

I might actually want this feature except that the benefit (i.e, amount
> I want it) is small compared to the cost of changing voting machines to
> allow it.


Well I consider it not a benefit in the least.

Real world example, 2000 presidential election, run using Range Voting.
Gore vs. Bush.  Gore would win if only the two candidates. Nader enters the
race. Many people now rank Gore lower than they otherwise would have, so
that they can express that they like Nader better than Gore. Bush now wins.
Deja vu.

It happened with plurality (and probably did as well in 92 with Bush Sr.
Clinton and Perot).  It would happen EXACTLY the same with Range.

Result:  people cluster into two parties as an "anti-vote-splitting"
strategy.  Partisan gridlock ensues.

Nothing has changed, except that Duverger's law gets modified to change
"plurality forces people into two parties" to "plurality and range voting
force people into two parties".

But with range voting, the cost is zero since this ability is
> already there, and the benefit remains about the same.


Cost is zero?  Versus Approval?  It is immensely more complicated for voters
than approval, and much more data has to be collected.  How exactly do you
consider this "zero cost".

You in your 10% scenario are attacking the idea of making voting machines
> more complicated to gain a tiny benefit.  But in the range voting
> case, "fixing" range voting actually is the worst of both worlds - more
> complicated machines AND lose the benefit of greater voter expressivity.
>
> Here is another angle to look at the same thing - many advocates of
> ranked-ballot voting
> want the voter to have the ability to "truncate" his ballot, i.e. to
> refuse
> to express preferences among some of the candidates.  Again, this is a
> voluntary
> downweighting of one's vote, and a rather peculiar kind too.
> There are others who insist the voter rank all candidates, in fact that is
> the law in
> most of Australia.


I disagree.  Unless you are talking about Borda Count (which I notice on
your site you use as a Straw Man over and over, and as justification for
Range.  Borda count is bad.  We already know it.)

With condorcet, only in the most contrived cases does voting for all the
irrelevant candidates really make a difference to the relevant candidates.
In the bush vs. gore scenario, really all would have mattered is that you
pick gore above bush or vice versa.  If you also want to express where nader
falls, fine, but since he is a distant third it won't make a difference.
Certainly if there were ten other candidates that are extremely remote,
truncating you ballot will not affect the gore vs. bush results.  To me that
is the whole concept of Condorcet, the fact that irrelevant alternatives
have little effect on the relevant candidates.

You also seem to consider "not expressing a preference" to be the equivalent
to "downweighting a preference".  This is a completely different thing.  If
you don't have a preference, you have no strategy.   If you have a
preference, AT ALL, it is against your interest to downweight that
preference (unless you somehow can "spend" your voting power elsewhere, but
you can't do that in range).

Also, if truncating your ballot really was downweighting, at least it means
that lazy voters have less say (which is always going to be true in a
society where voting is optional....those who don't bother voting have less
say).  Range voting means LESS lazy voters, those who take the time to
innumerate all the candidates rather than just slapping some 0's and 10's
on, have less say.  Bizarre.

With range voting as defined on the CRV web page
>      http://math.temple.edu/~wds/crv
> the voter has maximum freedom.
> Voter can:
>   1* score all candidates.
>   2* use a subrange of the full range thus downweighting his vote if he
> (perhaps peculiarly)
>       wishes to be insignificant.  Arbitrary choice of downweighting
> factor.
>   3* score only some candidates, expressing ignorance about all the
> others,
>           with arbitrary choice of the subset to score.
>   4* score only some candidates, giving all the others zeros ("truncation"
> - only more expressive).
>   5* score only some candidates, giving all the others 37s.
> These capabilities are not present in other common systems.  For example,
> in all ranked ballot systems I know of,  it is simply impossible to do
> (3),
> or to do (2) or (5).  The instructions from CRV recommend giving your
> favorite
> the full 99 and your most-hated the full 0, so that voters who follow
> that recommendation will never downweight.  But they can if they insist.


Just be honest about it.  Range is Approval with one and only one additional
feature: the ability to decrease your voting power.  If you were up front
about it, and presented it as I showed, I would have far less of a problem
with it (because everyone would see it for what it was, get a little
chuckle, and rightfully reject it).

-rob
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