[EM] ignoring "strength of opinion"

[rob brown]

On 12/10/05, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <abd at lomaxdesign.com> wrote:
>
> >   Even worse, it does so in a way that does not make it clear that
> > they may be compromising their own interests by "downweighting" their
> vote.
>
> Depends. When we actually come to Range implementations, this would
> be something to pay attention to. It's really a question of ballot
> design. But it is far from clear that a Range voter is "compromising
> their interests" by voting an intermediate vote for a candidate about
> whom they do not care strongly.
>
> Remember, under the present system, they don't have any choice at all....


Sure, but the choice you offer them would be seen as silly if you offered it
in a way consistant with how it is tabulated.  If you said:

Do you want this candidate to win? (yes or no)
How much much do you want this to count? (Enter a number between 0 and 10, 0
for minimum, 10 for maximum)

....most people would surely see that as absurd, but at least you wouldn't
be deceiving them into doing something counter to their interests.

Or, if it was tabulated smartly, where the points you give it were
interpreted as your preferences, and then were used to vote with optimum
strategy toward that end, it would be just wonderful.  But for some reason,
which I fail to see, you don't want to do that.

>Voting anything other than 1 or 10 (or whatever the range is) is
> >downweighting.
>
> That is, one's vote will not have the maximum effect on the average.
> But, in fact, one's vote is strengthening the possibility that the
> candidate will have just that score in the outcome. Give the
> candidates the scores you want them to receive!


Voting is not about giving scores.  It is about electing candidates.  Why
would anyone care what the score is if it isn't to elect a candidate?

Also, if a voter knows (through polls, for instance) that a candidate is
likely to have a score of less than 50, and he, for some reason, wants that
candidate to have a score of 50, his best strategy would be to give the
candidate a 100, which will move it closer to 50 than giving him a 50.
"Give the candidates the scores you want them to receive" is simply bad
strategy when you are using averages.  If you are voting on numbers, for
chrissake use median not average ( see
http://karmatics.com/voting/moose-example.html if you don't understand this
).  Still, using the median isn't going to solve the main problem here,
given that they are electing candidates rather than just picking numbers.


> However, yes, in an "I want my way" environment, one may wish to vote
> extremes. But there is a cost to this, which is that the ballot
> becomes an inaccurate expression of the voter's views, and that can
> have undesired consequences.
>

Totally agree that it is bad to have the ballot be an inaccurate
expression.  But as long as you continue to insist upon a method where
"accurate expression of views" is diametrically opposed to "optimum
strategy", you can expect that.

I put forward the DSV concept as a solution to this (I didn't know it had
already been invented, but it doesn't surprise me that it had).  It
addresses all this, by letting them express their accurate views, without
being strategically disadvantaged for doing so.  Why in the world wouldn't
you want something along those lines if it is possible?
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