[Election-Methods] Clone-related problems (was Re: Clone related problems in Range/Approval)

[Chris Benham]

Steve Eppley SEppley at alumni.caltech.edu 
Sat Apr 19 08:49:43 PDT 2008 
"I agree with Mr. Lomax that parties' main purpose is to coordinate 
campaigns, if he means coordinating the *votes* by assembling a 
coalition large enough either to win or to elect a "lesser evil" 
compromise that defeats a "greater evil."  Given traditional plurality 
rule or top two runoff or Instant Runoff or many other methods, parties 
fail to coordinate a large enough coalition if they nominate more than 
one candidate per office. "
Steve,
Since IRV  meets Clone-Winner I don't see how your claim applies to it.
While of course a party that endorses say two candidates A and B could
lose because some of its supporters didn't rank both A and B above all
the other candidates, I am sure that with voluntary voting in general that
negative would be overwhelmed by the effect of attracting more of their
supporters to vote.
It could be the case that one or both of  A and B are resolved to run with
or without their party's endorsement, so endorsing both might make for
a tighter exchange of preferences.

"Voting for a Published Ranking
    Prior to election day, each candidate publishes a ranking
    of the candidates.  On election day, each voter selects one
    candidate. (What could be simpler?)  Each vote is replaced
    by the ranking published by the voter's selected candidate.

Assume for this discussion that the algorithm VPR uses to tally the 
rankings doesn't suffer from Borda's awful "inferior clones" problem and 
that one of the following conditions is true:

    1. The algorithm elects within the top cycle.

    2. The votes are published, then each candidate may choose to
    withdraw from all the rankings before the rankings are tallied.
    (Candidates can withdraw to elect a compromise and defeat
    a greater evil.)"
So you want to constrain voters to only vote one of the rankings decided
by the candidates (or their backers in their name), thus in effect making
the candidates privileged super-voters; and on top of that you want to
give candidates the power to manipulate the result by withdrawing 
after the votes have been cast?
I would expect any voter with any concept of voter sovereignty and who isn't
a dumb sheep to object to that.

In a previous post I pointed out that allowing candidates to withdraw after
the votes have been cast (and counted) creates big incentives for corruption.
Constraining voters to only vote their favourite's published ranking makes it
much easier for the candidates/parties to make and deliver on preference
swap deals that might be completely unprincipled, opportunistic and ideologically
incongruous. It would also bizarrely magnify the clout of  very minor candidates
because of their total control over their supporters' full voted rankings.

Something like Forest Simmon's DYN method is far less objectionable, because
the voters have to opt in to having their vote in part commandeered by one of the
candidates. If  they ignore that option then it is just an Approval election.

Chris Benham


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