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

[Michael Poole]

Jonathan Lundell writes:

> On Nov 25, 2008, at 8:45 PM, Kevin Venzke wrote:
>
>> --- En date de : Mar 25.11.08, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax
>> <abd at lomaxdesign.com > a écrit :
>>> What Approval sincerely represents from a voter is a
>>> *decision* as to where to place an Approval cutoff.
>>
>> But is it not true that what *all* methods sincerely represent from a
>> voter are the decisions related to voting under that method?
>>
>> If a decision makes sense in a given context, then that is a sincere
>> decision. Is that not your stance?
>
> It shouldn't be. "Sincere" is a term of art in this context, not a
> value judgement. An insincere vote is simply one that does not
> represent the preference of the voter if the voter were a dictator.
> There's nothing *wrong* with voting insincerely (or, equivalently,
> strategically), in this sense; a voter has a right to do their best to
> achieve an optimum result in a particular context. ----

"Sincere" is fine as a term of art.  The limitation with "sincerity"
under that definition is that it only applies to the top N choices in
an N-winner election.  Most strategies involve manipulation of lower
rankings.

Abd's post made the error of conflating insincere voting with
strategic voting, and the further error of claiming that neither
approval nor range systems are ever vulnerable to strategic voting --
rather than restricting the hypothesis to sincere votes.

Michael Poole