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

[Juho Laatu]

--- On Thu, 27/11/08, Kevin Venzke <stepjak at yahoo.fr> wrote:

> From: Kevin Venzke <stepjak at yahoo.fr>
> Subject: Re: [EM] Why the concept of "sincere" votes in Range is flawed.
> To: election-methods at electorama.com
> Date: Thursday, 27 November, 2008, 3:25 AM
> Hi Juho,
> 
> --- En date de : Mer 26.11.08, Juho Laatu
> <juho4880 at yahoo.co.uk> a écrit :
> > > It is also far from obvious to me that Approval
> > > uniquely
> > > requires a strategic decision.
> > 
> > In the EM discussions people seem to assume
> > that at least one should put the cutoff between
> > some leading candidates. People seldom talk
> > about marking those candidates that one approves
> > (I have seen this approach however in some
> > mechanically generated ballots for simulations).
> > Don't know about real life.
> 
> Yes. But what I'm trying to do is attack the concept of
> "sincerity" and
> show that "sincere vote" doesn't mean
> anything without shared
> assumptions about how a ballot can represent sincere
> preferences.
> 
> (And then I would want to point out that this question of
> interpretation
> has no effect on the properties of the method.)


Yes, it is good to handle the mechanics of the methods
and the combination of the surrounding society and the
method as separate topics. The society may have impact
also on the performance of the method in the sense that
if the society does not accept strategic voting (or it
is just not widely spread) then the actual method may
also perform much better in such a society than in some
other one where strategic voting is the norm (voters
may e.g. generally vote as told by the strategists of
the parties).

Juho



> 
> > > You can also argue either
> > > that FPP also
> > > asks for a strategic decision, or else that
> > > "approval" is supposed
> > > to refer to a real concept.
> > 
> > FPP (or actually some society that uses FPP) could
> > take the stance that voters are expected to pick
> > one of the two leading candidates in a two-party
> > country, which would make voting sincere.
> 
> To say again, the idea of voting being "sincere"
> only means something if 
> the person you're talking to has a shared concept of
> what this means in 
> the context of FPP voting.
> 
> > > You can easily deny that you have an internal
> concept
> > of
> > > "approval,"
> > > but you can also deny that you have an internal
> > transitive
> > > ranking
> > > of the candidates. Maybe it's harder to
> believe,
> > but it
> > > can't be 
> > > disproven. (Though, I don't really think it
> is
> > harder
> > > to believe, 
> > > since "approval" has a plain English
> > meaning.)
> > 
> > It seems that voting method "Approval" has
> cut
> > its
> > ties to English term "approval" (at least at
> the
> > EM
> > list).
> 
> That's certainly so, but if I want to define a sincere
> Approval vote
> in terms of the plain English meaning of the term
> "approval," it will
> be hard to show that I'm wrong.
> 
> > 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.)
> 
> There is a lot of consensus, and perhaps this makes it
> easier to assume
> that preferences map intuitively to votes as some kind of
> general
> principle. If we debate about Approval we will probably
> argue about what
> the sincere vote is, not whether Approval supports the
> concept at all.
> 
> We would find a similar problem if we granted the idea of
> sincere
> cyclical preferences, and then wanted to analyze rank
> ballot methods
> and what "sincerity" must mean there.
> 
> Kevin Venzke
> 
> 
>       
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