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

[James Gilmour]

Abd ul-Rahman Lomax  > Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2008 7:09 PM
> IRV advocates are a bit obsessed with Later No Harm. I think the 
> average voter doesn't think about it at all.

My experience over several decades of explaining voting systems to ordinary electors leads me to the opposite conclusion.  'Later no
harm' is considered extremely important by ordinary voters, at least here in the UK.  When such electors first encounter a
preferential voting system and do not fully understand that the counting rules are based on 'later no harm', their first reaction is
to say that they will mark a preference only for their first choice candidate because a second preference would count against their
first choice and so reduce that candidate's chance of being elected.

Once they understand how the 'later no harm' counting rules will really work, they come to see the benefit to themselves of marking
more than one preference (always assuming they have more than one preference).  But what this shows very clearly is that 'later no
harm' is important to ordinary voters and its absence or presence in the counting rules would affect they way they would cast their
preferential votes.

James Gilmour
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