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

[Juho Laatu]

- Yes, I agree with most of this
- Voters should be made aware of the different approaches so that they can use the intended one (or the one that suits them better)
- Computerized methods could add something (e.g. more sincere input data, possibility of loops in the strategy changes) to the approach where voters just guess what their best vote might be

Juho



--- On Wed, 26/11/08, Kristofer Munsterhjelm <km-elmet at broadpark.no> wrote:

> From: Kristofer Munsterhjelm <km-elmet at broadpark.no>
> Subject: Re: [EM] Why the concept of "sincere" votes in Range is flawed.
> To: juho4880 at yahoo.co.uk
> Cc: election-methods at electorama.com
> Date: Wednesday, 26 November, 2008, 7:40 PM
> > It seems that voting method "Approval" has
> cut its
> > ties to English term "approval" (at least at
> the EM
> > list).
> > 
> > In ranking based methods EM people seem to assume
> > that voters have some easy to identify transitive
> > order of the candidates in their mind (=sincere
> > opinion).
> > 
> > I find it revealing that there is not much
> > discussion on the possibility to cast non-transitive
> > votes. Such votes would be strategically more
> > efficient than the transitive ones. Use of
> > transitive votes seem to reflect the idea that the
> > sincere opinion of a rational voter would always be
> > transitive. (Well, of course casting non-transitive
> > votes would be technically more challenging.)
> 
> I want to add to this by saying that if Approval is about
> approval, well, then discussions about frontrunner plus
> strategies won't capture the intent or point of the
> method. If the statement for Approval voting is "vote
> for those you like", or "vote for those of which
> you approve", then one should expect voters to do that,
> absent strategic incentive. Say there's a certain group
> of people that a voter approves of. If he has to plan beyond
> that point, then that's strategy. On the other hand, if
> Approval really is "pick those candidates you like more
> than or equal to the frontrunner you like the most",
> then there's not much approval-ish about the method, in
> the ordinary sense. It asks the voter to optimally configure
> his ballot. If we're going to do that, we should leave
> the task to a computer and use DSV instead.
> 
> Perhaps you agree with most of this, but I couldn't
> find anywhere else to put it.