[Election-Methods] Clone related problems in Range/Approval

[Juho]

On Apr 17, 2008, at 16:39 , Kevin Venzke wrote:

> Hi,
>
>>>> The claim that I don't recall having seen before is that in  
>>>> Range and
>>>> Approval it makes sense to the parties not to nominate multiple
>>>> candidates.
>
> I've made this claim as well. When we're lucky enough to have three  
> viable
> candidates I tend to assume that either the center is running as an
> independent, or one of the flank candidates is nominated by a (mostly
> futile) third party.

Makes sense. I think it is a good approach to evaluate all the  
plausible/probable basic scenarios. (Better than generic claims alone.)

> The harder claim is that this applies also to rank methods, though I'm
> confident it does.
>
> My goals in designing a single-winner method would be to provide  
> incentives
> to voters and candidates that make it possible to have three viable
> candidates, and elect the one (when he exists) which is the pick of  
> the
> "median voter."

I guess most single winner utility functions point approximately at  
the "median voter" opinion, with the assumption of a linear order of  
candidate opinions and voter preferences.

> If the method fails (picks a bad winner) when the field
> can't be narrowed to three viable candidates in time for the  
> election, or
> when the candidates can't be interpreted to fit on a 1D spectrum,  
> I'd say
> that's ok. The first problem is self-correcting, and the second one
> shouldn't be all that common.

The next common candidate opinion space could be one with two  
dimensions. One dimension may be enough to cover most basic cases but  
there may be also other quite common patters that may resemble having  
two dimensions, having two centrists with somewhat different profiles  
etc.

Juho


>
> Kevin Venzke
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> En finir avec le spam? Yahoo! Mail vous offre la meilleure  
> protection possible contre les messages non sollicités
> http://mail.yahoo.fr Yahoo! Mail
>
> ----
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for  
> list info


		
___________________________________________________________ 
The all-new Yahoo! Mail goes wherever you go - free your email address from your Internet provider. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html