[Election-Methods] Bullet Voting in the wider media

[Jonathan Lundell]

On Oct 7, 2007, at 8:31 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:

> At 08:34 PM 10/7/2007, Jonathan Lundell wrote:
>
>> The term "insincere" is an unfortunate shorthand for something other
>> than the usual dictionary meaning. In this form of election, I take
>> it to mean voting, for strategic reasons, for other than the voter's
>> n favorite candidates, assuming that the voter approves of at least n
>> candidates for the office
>
> "Approves of" is undefined. The voter bullet votes. That only  
> indicates approval of one candidate.

Indeed. That's why I added (and you snipped) one more sentence.

> The term "insincere" is an unfortunate shorthand for something other
> than the usual dictionary meaning. In this form of election, I take
> it to mean voting, for strategic reasons, for other than the voter's
> n favorite candidates, assuming that the voter approves of at least n
> candidates for the office. In this case, it's the vote that would be
> cast by a dictator.

I mean "dictator" in the sense used by Arrow.

>
> Now, I have not spent much time with multiwinner elections. Yes,  
> this article was about elections where there are n winners, but  
> I'll look at one with two winners and so the voter has 2 votes.  
> there are three candidates:
>
> Abraham Lincoln
> Genghis Khan
> Adolf Hitler.
>
> so to speak.
>
> Now, some elections have a threshold. If you don't get a certain  
> percentage of the vote, you are not elected; there will perhaps be  
> a runoff.
>
> The voter prefers Genghis Khan to Adolf Hitler, but detests both.
>
> Are we saying that a bullet vote for Abraham Lincoln is insincere?  
> Why? The voter has essentially set an approval cutoff between  
> Abraham Lincoln and Adolf Hitler. In this case, that isn't even  
> questionable, it is quite sincere.

Which is exactly what I meant by "unfortunate shorthand" above. Per  
your premise, our voter as dictator would fill the seats which Mr  
Lincoln and Mr Khan (or is it Mr Genghis?), assuming that both seats  
had to be filled from the candidate list. With STV, there's no  
problem expressing that preference. But with plurality or approval  
voting (or range, I suppose), the voter is forced to truncate his  
preferences to maximize his most-desired result: that Lincoln be  
elected, regardless of what happens to the second seat.

If you don't want to use the term "sincere" here, that's fine by me;  
let's use something else. Let's find some term that describes an  
ideal method in which a voter can express his true (dictatorial,  
perhaps benevolently so, perhaps not) preferences without worrying  
that there's some way of voting otherwise to achieve a better result.

>
> What bullet voting means, if deliberate, that the voter has such a  
> strong preference for the favored candidate winning that the voter  
> does not want to support any other candidate against him. While not  
> as drastic as the example I gave above, it merely indicates a  
> strong preference for the single candidate, strong enough that the  
> voter is willing to give up influencing a second seat. What's  
> insincere about that?
>
> There is a contradiction set up in every discussion I have seen of  
> the topic of strategic voting in Approval (and similar arguments  
> are made with Range):
>
> 1. There is a voter who approves of two candidates
> 2. But only votes for one because the voter wants that one to beat  
> the other.
>
> Ahem. Those are two contradictory conditions! Part of the problem  
> is the use of the term "approval." I was just reading Voting  
> Matters and discover that I'm not the first person to suggest that  
> we are talking about voting, not approving. I might vote for  
> someone I rather heavily disapprove of, if I have no better  
> practical option. A Nader supporter might vote for Gore, even if he  
> thinks that Gore is just as much a tool as Bush, for there are  
> other issues, such as Supreme Court appointments, etc.
>
> My point is that a voter can set an approval cutoff anywhere the  
> voter pleases, and there is nothing insincere about it, in the  
> ordinary sense, nor, in fact, in the technical voting sense. What  
> has happened is that terms and measures developed for ranked  
> methods are being applied to cardinal methods. In a ranked method,  
> "insincere" has a clear meaning: preference reversal. That's easy  
> to define! But preference reversal never benefits the voter in  
> Approval, nor in Range.
>
> However, those who are actually advocating a ranked method, such as  
> "Instant Runoff Voting," can't stand the idea that Approval is not  
> "vulnerable" to insincere voting, so they must extend the  
> definition of "insincere" to include something else. Basically,  
> they posit an approval cutoff of their own, such that the voter  
> "approves of" two candidates, but only votes for one. And then they  
> call this an "insincere vote."
>
> Now, unless the voter is merely lazy, we have to say that the voter  
> voted for the candidate the voter preferred; that the voter placed  
> his approval cutoff between the two candidate utilities. There is  
> *nothing* insincere about this, and no way to truly apply the  
> concept of tactical voting to it. There is no preference reversal.

There's a forced lack of expressiveness. It's exactly the "no better  
practical option" that you refer to above that I'm objecting to wrt  
approval and plurality voting. If the voter in your example were  
dictatorially picking the president, he'd choose Nader, and yet you  
have him voting for Gore.

Again, if it bothers you to call that "insincere", I'm not going to  
argue over the term.

>
> Now, there is the reverse situation: the voter has a preference  
> between two candidates, but approves both. What I find amazing is  
> that critics of Approval will consider this as tactical voting as  
> well.
>
> "Bullet Voting" Bad.
> "multiple approvals for other than clones" Bad.
>
> Bottom line: not the method on my agenda: Bad.
>
> I'm going after the Tactical Voting reference in the Wikipedia  
> article. It's not going to be easy. This warped concept of tactical  
> voting is found in published papers ("peer-reviewed") so there is a  
> problem. The fact is that a lot of opinion and shallow thinking has  
> been published in peer-reviewed journals, and there are  
> contradictory articles and opinions. I've already attracted one  
> likely sock puppet who reverted my changes. (My edits in the  
> Instant Runoff Voting article flushed out one sock puppet plus one  
> he created just to try to take me out; there is a good chance this  
> is another sock for the same foot. Certainly it is a single-purpose  
> account, created just to edit the Approval Voting article, so far,  
> and registered about when the first sock I encountered was about to  
> be banned....
>
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