[EM] Why the concept of "sincere" votes in Range is flawed.

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 04:47 PM 12/2/2008, Jonathan Lundell wrote:
>On Dec 2, 2008, at 1:24 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
>
>>Yes. Preference can be determined, generally, rather easily, by one
>>of two methods. The first method is pairwise comparison. With a
>>series of pairwise comparisons, we can construct a rank order.
>>Usually. It's possible, because different issue spaces get involved
>>in each choice, that this will result in a Condorcet cycle. But that
>>is rare.
>>
>>The second method, though, bypasses Condorcet cycles, because it is
>>essentially a Range method! That is, we look at the entire set of
>>candidates and pick our favorite, then set this aside, having
>>determined the rank of that candidate. We then look again, etc. We
>>can also run this from the bottom, which of these is worst -- as far
>>as we know (same restriction on the top, by the way, maybe one of
>>those middle candidates is actually quite good, but we just don't
>>know it yet. This is one reason why runoff voting can be much better
>>than fixed-preference voting theory would predict.)
>
>There's a third method, namely the one used for STV/IRV voting: pick
>an overall favorite from the entire field, and then iterate, in each
>iteration excluding already-ranked candidates from consideration.

That's not a third method, that's the second, or the first half of 
the second. You can run it from the bottom as well. One important 
point is to rank *together* candidates where one can't with 
reasonable ease choose which one is best.