[EM] Free riding

[Raph Frank]

On 9/3/08, Juho <juho4880 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> > I think you should rank A as high as possible but behind at least 1
> > candidate who you are reasonably sure will be elected.
> >
>
>  I didn't quite get this part of the mail. Usually candidates that are sure
> to be elected would go down in the rankings.

Well, you could break candidates into

1) candidates that I like that are (near) certain to be elected
2) candidates I like that have a reasonable chance

You should put at least 1 candidate from 2 ahead of candidates from 1.

> > A2>A1>....
> >
> > is just as effective as dropping A1 as long as A1 is elected in the first
> round.
> >
> > Maybe candidates with strong person votes should advise voters to rank
> > them second.
> >
>
>  I'm not sure if any candidate has any direct interest to ask for second
> rankings (instead of first) (except for truly altruistic reasons, or maybe
> to benefit the party). Parties may wish this. If parties intentionally
> manage to lower the rankings of a candidate, then that candidate may as for
> "at least second rankings".

Yeah, I mean to benefit the party.

There is a candidate in our constituency who is really popular, but
who doesn't like vote management (he likes getting nearly 2 quotas).

Anyway, it can be hard to convince a candidate to cooperate with the
vote management strategy.  If you tell him not to canvas anywhere, he
might object.  If you tell him to advise people to rank him number 2,
then it might be easier.

A strong personal vote combined with lots of rank 2's should be enough
to get him elected.  The only way he would lose is if the other party
member managed to get more first choices than him.

> Vote management
> could however be called "party free riding".

Schulze feels that they are both sides of the same coin.  You are
giving your party's supporters advice on how best to optimise their
votes.

> This may be against the interests
> of the individual voters. If the voter expects his/her personal vote to some
> candidate of "another party" to become "managed" (=all personal votes
> consumed almost fully) then that voter may change his/her voting behaviour
> accordingly (not vote for that candidate or be eve more certain to vote for
> that candidate).

That is true, vote management could cause a potential backlash.

However, it is a complex technical point, that most of the general
public aren't aware of.

Remember, anyone who understands Hylland free-riding wouldn't vote for
a popular candidate anyway.

> It is also possible that a clever party that is also able
> to control its candidates is able to make the landscape such that the voters
> actually (in theory) will find it strategically wise to vote in the way that
> the party wants them to vote (e.g. to give personal votes to a candidate who
> is close to not becoming elected).

This is kinda what assigning each candidate an area to canvas in is
designed to achieve.  They don't tell voters how to vote, the voters
in a certain area will just see a certain candidate's posters more
often.

> On very wild idea would be to allow the candidate (or maybe in practice the
> party) to decide which votes to transfer. That would at least make vote
> management less interesting. To "personal voters" this would mean that
> probably their vote will be consumed in full if the target candidate gets
> elected. Maybe this is a fair enough deal for many of them.

That is sorta like semi-asset voting.  The voters still decide the
transfer, but the candidate gets to decide which voters.

However, in most cases, this would result in 100% candidate control.
Unless the candidate exceeds the quota by a large amount (like say 3
quotas FPV), he is unlikely to have problems finding enough party
voters to fill his entire excess.

This would make the management explicit.  I could see some popular
candidates stating prior to the election that they will pick ballots
to transfer proportionally.