[Election-Methods] hypothetical question re: Approval

[Paul Kislanko]

Regarding
"Regarding voting power given to the voting junkies...

I tried to alleviate that a bit, by saying it would end at a random time.
So as long as everyone has a chance to come back and tweak their vote 3 or 4
times....would that be enough?  I'm guessing...but can't be sure...that it
would reach an equilibrium and everyone would not be able to improve their
votes."
 
I still think there'd be a problem with folks who spent a few months doing
their civic duty by learning what the candidates said and thinking about
issues coming up with a ballot and going away being out-strategized by a
concerted effort on the part of voting junkies who are more interested in
getting their party in power than they are about any issue related to the
public interest.
 
In my idealized example, everyone is in the virtual voting booth at the same
time, and while no one can see any others ballots, everyone can see the
current tallys, and can adjust their ballot based upon the current results.
(This works in theory only if there is a voting both for each voter, and
they can all stay in it until everyone steps out, but the internet model
makes that possible in the virtual world, with "being in the voting booth"
corresponding to "being logged in to the voting server."
 
Not only do I think this "perfect knowledge" paradigm results in an
equilibrium, I beleve at the closing of the voting (shutdown of the server)
there'd be enough information available to create ranked ballots for each
voter and to count them however one wished.
 
I think Rob's astraction gives us a way to distinguish "strategic voting in
ones interest" from "strategic manipulation of the results depending upon
the method."

  _____  

From: election-methods-bounces at lists.electorama.com
[mailto:election-methods-bounces at lists.electorama.com] On Behalf Of rob
brown
Sent: Monday, December 31, 2007 12:10 AM
To: Election Methods Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Election-Methods] hypothetical question re: Approval


Paul, thanks for the reply, and with your permission I posted your entire
reply to the list....


On Dec 30, 2007 8:51 PM, Paul Kislanko <jpkislanko at bellsouth.net
<mailto:jpkislanko at bellsouth.net> > wrote:


Funny, I was imagining the same sort of real-time results and
changeable-vote-based-upon real-time-results in conjunction with a Condorcet
based thought experiment. Approval is kind of a generalization of what I was
thinking.
 
To give context to my answer, I think Approval would be a perfectly good
method for a party to adopt for its primary. It's darn near perfect for
allowing me to express my first choice plus whoever I think has a better
chance of winning than my first choice, assuming I want my party's candidate
to win even if he's my last choice in the primary.... I think it is
inappropriate for general elections for any number of technical reasons.
 
What's really interesting about approval in your scenario is that if you can
get real-time results and can change your ballot, as the voting deadline
nears its end you can affect the outcome by de-approving candidates that are
doing "too well" in your estimation and approving candidates you previously
didn't if doing so would cause the new candidate to pass someone you
strongly dis-approve of.
 
Alas, the problem is that much more "voting power" would be given to the
voting junkies who stayed online and kept changing their ballots than to the
folks who spent a lot of time coming up with one ballot, submitted it, and
then went to bed. Scary.
 
(This is off-list, but mostly because I hit the Reply instead of Reply-All.
Feel free to quote me if you do so exactly.)


Regarding voting power given to the voting junkies...

I tried to alleviate that a bit, by saying it would end at a random time.
So as long as everyone has a chance to come back and tweak their vote 3 or 4
times....would that be enough?  I'm guessing...but can't be sure...that it
would reach an equilibrium and everyone would not be able to improve their
votes. However, a condorcet cycle might actually put this into a feedback
loop. (I also tried to mitigate that a bit by saying they could view average
results over a longer time period....they might want to hedge their bets by
voting based on what they see as the most likely eventual outcome) 

Still....if they get more power by being a "voting junkie"...wouldn't that
be true of plain old approval voting too, at least as much so?  Those that
pay closer atttention to the polls would have more power.  In an election
that is effectively a condorcet cycle,  the polls become part of the
feedback loop, and having up-to-the-minute poll information would be
especially valuable.  (but it might also be inaccurate, because people might
have a strong incentive to lie to the pollsters) 


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