[EM] IRV and Brown vs. Smallwood

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

Juho Laatu wrote:

> Actually it may be a quite good strategy in
> IRV not to rank those favourite candidates
> that do not have a chance but to rank only
> those candidates that have a chance. This
> increases the probability that one's most
> favoured candidates with chances of winning
> the election are not eliminated too early
> (assuming that they might win if they could
> stay in the race until the end).

That's also the strategy in Plurality - don't vote for those candidates 
that don't have a chance. But if everybody thinks like this, you end up 
with the "lesser of n evils". One of the points of ranked voting is that 
you don't have to do that - you can vote X > Y > Z so you say "I like X, 
but if I can't have X, I'd have Y before Z". If this ability is 
compromised by that voting for unpopular candidates dilutes the vote so 
much one should rather not, then why have ranked voting in the first place?