[EM] Student government - what voting system to recommend?

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 07:43 AM 4/29/2007, Juho wrote:
> > Range *also* allows the majority to rule.
>
>Ok, if the voters go use the Approval strategies.

I just want to underscore this.

The majority has a choice. It can insist upon its first preference 
and prevail by bullet-voting for it. Or it can allow a *better* 
overall outcome by more accurately estimating its satisfaction with 
other candidates.

I assume that, in doing this, the majority will only allow 
significant "leakage" of power to non-preferred candidates who are 
acceptable to the majority.

In voting in this way, a self-aware majority can decide which is more 
important: getting its first preference, or maximizing the unity of 
the society around the election outcome. That unity has a power and 
value all its own.

Now, what is the best vote if you don't know if you are in the 
majority? There is a risk involved in underrating a candidate who is 
not your first preference, just as there is a risk in overrating such 
a candidate. My sense is that the most powerful strategy, in the 
zero-knowledge case, is to simply vote sincerely. I.e., max rate your 
favorite, min-rate your least-liked, and let the rest fall where they 
may, depending on how strong the preferences are. I can see a common 
voting pattern as being *mostly* Approval style. But it is the 
exceptions that are interesting in Range!

I'm coming to think of "partial votes." In Approval, you can 
segregate candidates into two classes; you vote for one class and not 
for the other, the effect being that you abstain from all pairwise 
elections between members of one class and participate fully in all 
pairwise elections between members of differing classes.

Range is really quite similar, except that, in addition to these two 
options, there are intermediate options, where one *partially* 
abstains, or partially participates, same difference. You can fully 
participate in any election where your preference is very strong and 
fully abstain where your preference is very weak. But where your 
preference is between these extremes, you can partially participate.

 From the point of view of decision-making theory -- entirely aside 
from politics -- this is so obviously superior that it's a wonder 
that we haven't been trying to apply this to politics long ago. The 
idea, we so commonly see, that Range allegedly rewards strong 
preference ... is absolutely true, and this is exactly as it should 
be. The corollary is that Range ignores weak preference. Isn't that 
precisely correct?

More accurately, Range *respects* strong preference. It does not 
necessarily reward it, it can actually punish it. If you expressed 
strong preference for A over all others, leaving B, a reasonable 
second choice, out in the cold, and, as a result, C, whom you hate, 
wins, Range has punished your strong preference. Because it was 
inappropriate. You lied, and Range took you at your word.

It's ironic, don't you think, that even Range critics often claim to 
accept that Range is a great method for sincere voters. (But, of 
course, blah, blah, blah.)

One of the ways of encouraging sincerity is to take people at their 
word. Give them what they ask for, if you can afford it.

And if you are a member of the majority who allows some rating 
strength to your second preference, you can afford it, assuming that 
the second preference is good enough for you. If someone else 
bullet-votes for that second preference, have you been a "sucker," as 
Mike Ossipoff so liberally claims?

I don't think so. You simply allowed someone else's expressed strong 
preference to prevail. That's actually reasonably rational behavior 
under most circumstances. When you can afford it.