[EM] Favoring a frontrunner

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 11:31 PM 12/4/2008, Dave Ketchum wrote:
>Favored frontrunner?  Trying to add some thought.
>
>Agreed to "first rate a favorite and the worst".
>
>Then the standard thought is "the voter rates the frontrunners".
>
>This needs careful thought.  It is likely that one of the 
>frontruners will win.  This voter has two obvious approaches to select from:
>      IF this voter has a preference, proceed as Abd and others suggest.
>      BUT if this voter sees them as equally desirable or 
> undesirable, it is proper to treat them as such.

It's "proper" and it improves the results overall, but it is an 
abstention with regard to the realistic election pair. That's fine. 
But if the voter has a significant preference -- suppose those were 
the only two candidates on the ballot, would you bother voting? -- 
I'd not suggest voting that way. Make a choice, if it matters. If 
not, sure, stand aside and let people who care make the decision.

With your vote equating them, you can express, still, whether you 
accept them or not. That can be important if a majority is required 
(the Range method then must have an explicit method of indicating 
that the voter will accept the election of each candidate, easy to 
do, probably the easiest is that the voter rates the candidate above 
midrange -- or maybe at midrange.)