[EM] Linear Spread Median Range Voting

[rob brown]

On 12/20/05, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <abd at lomaxdesign.com> wrote:
>
> At 07:48 PM 12/20/2005, rob brown wrote:
> >I like this way better than "regular" range voting, as it removes a
> >large part of the incentive people have to vote insincerely.
> >
> >Still, a voter has to take a guess as to what vote will be most
> >effective in helping to achieve what he wants.  Example:  I vote A:
> >0, B: 55, C: 100.
> >
> >Then the final score comes out to be A: 56.001, B: 56, C: 45.
>
> >Oops, my vote of 55 for B actually lowered his score, and in this
> >very tight race may have actually cost him the election.
>
> Not exactly. Yes, the vote for B lowered the median by a tiny
> fraction, but, unless this was quite a small town, probably not as
> much as .001.


Well, that is the nature of elections that your vote only moves the result a
small amount.  The point is, it moved it in the wrong direction.

Your vote for B lowered his score when you would have wanted to raise his
score (had you known that it was A, and not C, that was his main
competitor).  The reason I had them differ by a small amount was to show the
case where the election could be lost by one vote.  But of course that's not
the point.  You don't know whether your vote will help or hurt your
candidate.  Why do it that way when condorcet and especially DSV methods
allow you to be absolutely honest, and always* have it work in your favor?

*ok not always.  But the exceptions are so rare they are academic.

You would presumably know enough to know that A was roughly as
> popular as B. (This is a *really* close election, they are not all
> that common.) You'd probably have seen polls that A and B were going
> to get in the range of the mid-fifties. So you did cut it close
> rating B as 55, if it was so important to you that B win.


But why *should* you have to know that, when there are perfectly good
methods that don't require you know a thing other than which candidates you
like more than which?

If you have strong preferences, with median Range -- though the

> method is not really well defined yet -- you might want to vote
> nearer the extremes, just to be safe. So your vote might have been A,
> 0; B: 80; C: 100.


But what if I thought it might end up between B and C, and I was helping the
one I didn't prefer?

You seem to suggest that voters will know when an election is close between
two candidates.....maybe for US president, but what about other elections?
Will this work for district supervisor?

>Personally, I will never get behind a method that gives a
> >significant advantage to those voters that are better at guessing
> >who is likely to win, and this method does that (as does approval).
>
> This method does that far less than Approval.


I'm not sure I'm convinced.  Considering your much more complex interface
and additional data you have to collect, I don't think you gain much at all
over approval in that regard.

Mr. Brown and I differ on the philosophy behind elections, quite
> significantly. In my view, the ultimate "advantage" to the individual
> voter lies in the election of a candidate who has the broadest support.


I'm all for broad support.  What I am against is methods that require voters
to be strategic and to have knowledge of the current standings of the
candidates for their votes to have the most impact.

Especially when this problem has been solved by other methods.

-rob
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/attachments/20051220/a6e7b596/attachment-0003.htm>