[Election-Methods] RE : Range voting simulations

[Ian Fellows]

Kevin,

That seems to me to be an unrealistic assumption of voter behavior.
Strategic votes under this definition of "frontrunner" could then be based
on the two least likely to be elected candidates. Admittedly, finding a
strategic equilibrium for a voting system is difficult, and in most cases
computationally expensive. The solution to this problem is not to pick two
candidates at random, and base your strategies on the assumption that these
are the most viable candidates. This is especially true of approval voting,
as there is no non-strategic voting pattern (that is not to say that a
strategic voting pattern is necessarily dishonest).

Warren: Do your simulations follow the same logic as Kevin's? Or am I
missing something in the code?

Cheers,
Ian
http://thefell.googlepages.com

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi Ian,

--- Ian Fellows <ifellows at ucsd.edu> a ecrit :
> Hi all,
>
> I am trying to take a closer look at some of the simulations used to
> justify
> range voting. Looking at the code, it appears that candidate 0, and 1 are
> assumed to be the pre-election front runners. I was not able to determine
> anything unique about these candidates (from the genutils function). Is
> there a reason why these candidates are front runners? These front
> runners
> are then used to generate the strategies for strategic voters.
>
> Do any of the range voting people have any ideas? I  tried contacting Dr.
> Smith on thur but have not received a response yet.

I can't speak for Warren, but when I wrote a simulation to compare Approval
under various scenarios to Schulze, I did the same thing, in order to
simulate the situation where the "frontrunners" have acquired their status
totally arbitrarily. It is a pessimistic estimate of what happens normally
under plurality voting.

I would certainly say it's more of a "worst case" than a realistic
assumption though.

Kevin Venzke

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