[EM] Least Additional Votes. The importance of strategy.

[Juho Laatu]

Hello Eric,

I think many people might really use strategy that is harmful to them 
but looks promising at first sight.

They might falsely think like in the lines of the Borda method: "last 
position in the ballot gives least points"

Or in terms of ranking: "one negative point to the last candidate per 
each candidate that is ahead of her"

Maybe both "educated" and this kind of "uneducated" strategies will be 
used in real elections.

I think governments could well distribute some propaganda that 
encourages voters both to forget their uneducated strategies (because 
they just harm them) and at the same time maybe to forget also their 
intention to use the educated strategies (that might or might not 
work).

One more interesting category of human behaviour is the US presidential 
elections where considerable number of people vote for other than the 
two major candidates. This always happens although their vote will be 
lost and they could on the other hand influence the election results by 
voting one of the two main candidates. These people may either not 
understand that their vote is lost (in the sense of having some effect 
in the results) or maybe they understand this but anyway still want to 
show their sincere opinion or the fact that they don't like the major 
candidates at all. What I find interesting in this case is that these 
people would probably vote the same way also in Condorcet based 
elections, i.e. not applying any sensible strategy or simply voting 
sincerely. Also part of the supporters of the major candidates would 
vote sincerely even if there were possibilities to apply some 
strategies. Maybe the number of people behaving this way could be 
estimated based on this data from earlier elections and maybe with some 
opinion surveys.

Best Regards,
Juho




On Mar 17, 2005, at 17:02, Eric Gorr wrote:

> Juho Laatu wrote:
>
>> This is interesting. I believe that when Condorcet based methods are 
>> taken into use there really will be large number of people who will 
>> put the strongest competitor of their favourite candidate last on 
>> their ballot - just to make sure that she will not be elected.
>
> I agree this is likely, but only if they did not prefer any other 
> candidate to this strongest competitor.
>
> If everyone ranked the strongest competitor below candidates they 
> preferred less, it seems obvious they could turn a candidate they 
> preferred less into the strongest competitor and potential winner and 
> I fail to see how this could be a rational choice.
>
>
> -- 
> == Eric Gorr ========= http://www.ericgorr.net ========= ICQ:9293199 ==
> "Those who would sacrifice a little freedom for temporal safety
> deserve neither to be safe or free." -- Benjamin Franklin
> == Insults, like violence, are the last refuge of the incompetent... 
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