[EM] replies to Lomax re voting strategically and DH3 pathology that results

[Warren Smith]

Here is the Lomax quote:

By the way, wouldn't Range have produced similar results with similar 
selfish exaggeration?

>  also point out that another example was the world's only Borda 
> government (Kiribati)
>where again such phenomena were immediately observed.

Borda is particularly vulnerable to this problem, but I would think 
Range would be as well. But what do I know? Not much....

>--As far as "horribly common" by that I meant (as I described on the DH3 page
>    http://math.temple.edu/~wds/crv/DH3.html )
>that DH3 occurs whenever there are 3 comparable rival good 
>candidates and a bad one.

The theory here is that voters will rank the bad candidate higher 
than the rival good candidates. And the bad outcomes seen are proof 
that the strategy sucks.

What is needed in a democracy is for voters to *trust* democratic 
process by voting sincerely. If enough voters try to distort the 
system by strategic voting, in order to gain a very short-sighted, 
narrow, and immediate purpose, any system which depends on sincere 
ratings or rankings is going to be in trouble.

[end of Lomax quote]

OK, first of all, NO, range would NOT
have produced similar results with similar 
selfish exaggeration, and is immune to DH3.
YES, you do not know much.
Actually, even thinking 1 minute would not be required,
since it already explained exactly why range is immune to DH3, right on the DH3
web page that you were responding to in  this webpost.

Second of all, your final paragraph is rather reminsiscent of Borda's remark
sometime around 1790.  Borda was being attacked by those who
were pointing out the bad reaction of Borda Voting to strategy.  He responded,
presumably with a similar air of autraged contempt:
"My system is designed for _honest_ men."

However, the subsequent 215 years have indicated that Borda was wrongheaded
and strategic voting is common.  For example, studies indicated that of those who
felt Nader was best in 2000, something like 1 in 10 or fewer voted for him,
as opposed to somebody else.  Similarly for Buchanan.  So, amazingly enough,
it appears that 90% of voters still have not yet reached Lomax's high state of wisdom
that they should be sincere instead of shortsighted and strategic.  They all
seem to want to greedily advance their own agenda's chances
instead of recognizing that if everybody just
voted sincerely that'd be better for all society (which it would).
And gee, this has just kept happening for 200 years.
So sooner or later, I am hoping that Lomax's understanding of democracy
will advance to the year 1790 and he will recognize that voting systems
should be designed not to degrade dramatically
when confronted by strategic voters.  (DH3 being an example
of dramatic degradation:  the DH3 web page is 
http://math.temple.edu/~wds/crv/DH3.html .)

Fortunately, range voting may be regarded as having been designed with that in mind.
In fact, there is a theorem, which admittedly I wrote up somewhat clumsily (but it
is valid) in my 2000 RV paper, which basically characterizes range voting as
the unique "compact additive fair" voting system in which voters can be
maximally expressive without being strategically stupid.

Warren D Smith

PS. Incidentally, although my remark that it WOULD be better for all society if everybody just
voted sincerely, while it is generlaly true for many voting systems such as Range, is
in fact untrue in many common scenarios for plurality voting, as several
researchers including me have found in computer sims.  That is, if
you have the right number of candidates and the right kind of randomized electorate,
then strategic plurality voting actually produces a better result on average (utility wise)
than honest plurality voting.  This is because the best of 2 random candidates is
superior to the result you get though honest Plur Voting due to the latter
being heavily degraded by cloning and vote-splittng effects which are absent i
2-party dominated strategic plur voting.

Plurality voting is unusual in that respect though.  Most voting systems
work better with honest voters.