[EM] Correction of false statements by Ossipff & Schudy about range voting.

[Chris Benham]

Warren Smith wrote:

>>Warren Schudy in a July 2007 draft paper:
>>"Range voting is a generalisation of approval voting where you can give
>>each candidate any score
>>between 0 and 1. Optimal strategies never vote anything other than 0 or
>>1, so range voting
>>complicates ballots and confuses voters for little or no gain."
>>
>>Ossipoff: Warren Schude's statement was correct
>>    
>>
>
>--CORRECTION: optimal strategies can vote other than 0 and 1, and
>voting 0 or 1 can be suboptimal.
>
>Examples include
>http://rangevoting.org/RVstrat1.html
>http://rangevoting.org/PuzzlePage.html#prob19
>
>Also, just in the following incredibly trivial total knowledge example
>TOTAL FROM OTHER VOTERS:  A=85.4  B=85.5
>YOUR VOTE:    A=?  B=?
>the vote A=1 B=0 is equally as optimal as A=0.9 B=0.1.
>This also falsifies the statement "Optimal strategies never vote anything other than 0 or 1".
>  
>

I don't have a "password", so I can't access the given puzzle solution.  
Warren Schudy's "never" I suppose meant "never in a remotely
plausible public political election scenario".  I knew there was the odd 
exception in elections with very few voters and/or the voter has
much more precise information than s/he could ever plausibly have in a 
public election.

Regarding "social utility", I'm of the school that says that to the 
extent that it is a real and wonderful thing it will look after itself 
if we do
our best to ensure that the election method is as fair and 
strategy-resistant as possible.

Chris Benham






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