[Election-Methods] Smith exposes our false statements

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 06:01 AM 7/26/2007, Michael Ossipoff wrote:

>I'd said that the SU claim depends on sincere voting. Smith wants to 
>believe that I was saying that, in general, one can't say anything 
>about SU unless voting is sincere. But I didn't say that. Does Smith 
>know what "the" means? The definite article indicates particularness.
>
> From the context of the discussion, it should be obvious to anyone 
> that I was referring to the Rangers' claim that Range does better 
> than Approval by SU.

Yes. The simulations show that. Ossipoff is confusing maximal 
individual voter strategy with maximal overall result utility.

When choosing an election method, we are considering the benefit to 
the entire society. And I've given reasons why individual voters 
would rationally choose the method which produces the maximal overall 
benefit. What goes around comes around.

And the simulations consider voting strategy. If many voters use 
Approval voting strategy, SU is injured (how could it not be, they 
are concealing information about it), and this does harm sincere 
voters, but it *still* is true that SU is maximized more by Range 
than by Approval. (More accurately, Range 999, I think he's studying, 
maximizes utility better than Range 1.)

We have been examining the claim that optimal individual strategy is 
to vote Approval style. We already know that optimal strategy *with 
some patterns of preference and probabilities of election* is to vote 
Approval style. However, this does not establish superiority of 
Approval over Range. It could just mean that individuals can gain 
some small benefit for themselves, under these conditions, by 
expressing their preferences strongly. However, by doing so, they may 
be reducing overall utility. Ossipoff's solution is to prohibit 
people from expressing weak preference.

The problem is that this choice not only injures overall utility, it 
injures the utility of each voter -- with some preference patterns, at least.

It does not follow from the optimal strategy for an individual being 
to vote Approval style that the best method would be Approval. My 
study shows that the Approval style voter loses utility if the 
election method is converted to Approval from Range 2. *Personal 
utility*. I have not been studying overall utility, only personal.

Isn't that interesting?