[EM] Favoring a frontrunner

[Dave Ketchum]

My point was ONLY that the voter could have equal feeling as to the 
frontrunners.  Here Abd offers some thought on that topic.

DWK

On Fri, 05 Dec 2008 13:53:09 -0500 Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
> 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.)
-- 
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  Dave Ketchum   108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY  13827-1708   607-687-5026
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