[EM] Range vs Condorcet

[Greg Nisbet]

The stalemate continues. In the meantime here is a pro-range argument.

I'm not going to bother to quote ones from CRV. Those have probably
all been discussed ad infinitum.

Impacts of strategic voting:

Ballot compression is less worrisome than offensive order reversal.
There scenarios under which reversing Range Voting pseudopreferences
is strategic are few and far between. This could conceivably occur if
two sets of clones are competing, you don't know who is winning but
you prefer one member of each set to the other member of that set. In
that rare case, it may well be worth your while. This is hardly normal
behvaior of the system though so let me suffice it to say that for the
most part the direction of the comparisons on a Range ballot are
sincere. This means that the information transmitted by strategic
range voters might be more vague but is rarely dishonest. Next, this
will only occur if voters have a strong X is much better than all
non-X mentality. If they do have such a mentality it is probably not
best that they be forced to compromise. Condorcet method strategizing,
I would argue, is more destructive. The closest thing to backfiring
under normal Range scenarios is losing the opportunity to pick between
the other candidates. In Condorcet backfiring is more catastrophic as
fodder candidates used to bury a popular rival can be elected directly
by your vote. The distinction is important because in Condorcet your
vote is more likely to actually cause harm if strategic voting is
attempted as opposed to merely forfeiting one's opportunity to select
among rival candidates.