[EM] Majority Criterion poor standard for elections

[Juho]

On Oct 24, 2006, at 5:33 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:

> The Majority Criterion, I could show, also causes the voting system
> to devalue, effectively, the votes of knowledgeable voters, making
> them equal to those of those who are not knowledgeable. While we
> often think of strong opinions as representing fanaticism, the fact
> is that those who are knowledgeable about a subject are likely to
> have much stronger opinions about it -- so strong that their opinions
> may even be admitted as evidence, "expert opinion," -- than those who
> are not informed. When the uninformed have strong opinions, we would
> hope that these opinions could be given less weight, but I see no way
> to do this without violating the  basic criteria of democracy;
> however, a rational system would at least allow voters to indicate
> how strong their preferences are.

One could develop voting methods where knowledgeable voters have more  
weight than uninformed voters. One could have e.g. a two layer system  
where voters first "vote" on how much weight each voter has and then  
cast their votes with these weights (electing representatives with  
different weights as a result of different level of support is also  
possible). In a court different weights are normal ("expert opinion")  
but in elections it is more typical that each voter has the same  
weight (could be either "one man one vote" or "same maximum vote  
strength for all").

An opinion "Martians will attack us if we choose pizza that has  
champignons in it" may not be an expert opinion but maybe that vote  
should be given a high weight since obviously the end result of the  
vote has great importance to this voter. An expert opinion "eating a  
pizza with ham it is known to be on average 3 seconds faster than  
eating a pizza with pepperoni" may have high weight in credibility  
but even if the eaters don't have much time to waste this voter's  
decision to vote for ham based on this criterion (in the absence of  
other better reasons) could have low weight. Here each voter's  
feelings maybe had the same allowed maximum weight but maybe the  
expert used only part of that weight.

In the traditional model of democracy one must rely on that all (or  
sufficient number of) voters are somewhat knowledgeable of what's  
going on in the society and know how it works and are therefore able  
to make sufficiently rational decisions as a group.

One more approach would be to make psychological tests to all voters  
and give more weight to those who seem to suffer/enjoy most depending  
on if unwanted or wanted decisions are made. This would optimize the  
utility in one sense.

Juho Laatu


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