[EM] Definition of "sincere approval voting" (was FBC comparison: WV, margins, MMPO, DMC)

[Chris Benham]

Kevin,

>--- Jobst Heitzig <heitzig-j at web.de> a écrit :
>  
>
>>> We could discuss whether insincere equal ranking for top is more dishonest or whether approving
>>> one more candidate is more dishonest...
>>    
>>
>
>In my opinion, insincere equal ranking is more insincere than approving
>an additional candidate.
>  
>
I  strongly agree with this.

>"Sincere approval voting" isn't even clearly
>defined.
>
I've  seen one definition that says that as long as the voter sincerely 
prefers all  the candidates  s/he approves to all the ones s/he doesn't,
then the "approval vote"  is sincere.  To me this is mainly a bit of 
sophistry  for the purpose of promoting Approval.

This is my proposed clear definition:
"An  'approval vote' is one that makes some approval distinction among 
the candidates. It is sincere if 
(1)the voter sincerely prefers all the approved candidates (or single 
candidate) to all the not approved candidates (or single candidate), and
(2) it is how the voter would vote without any knowledge or guess as to 
how other voters might vote."

By this definition, DMC  (like IRV and unlike WV) meets  "No 
Zero-Information Strategy".  No method can make it impossible for 
well-informed
strategists to sometimes have an advantage, but it irks me that WV  has 
non-obvious fairly sophisticated strategy for "zero-information" voters
(random-fill and if you have a big ratings gap, equal-rank above it).


Chris Benham


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