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

[Jonathan Lundell]

On Jan 25, 2009, at 3:50 PM, James Gilmour wrote:

>> Jonathan Lundell  > Sent: Sunday, January 25, 2009 10:21 PM
>> If we regard the preference order as list of contingent choices (this
>> view has come up in IRV discussions), then the ability to vote in a
>> plurality election implies the ability to produce such a list, ......
>
> Preferences in IRV elections are contingency choices, but I do not  
> see why the ability to pick one winner from the set on offer in a
> plurality election in any way implies that I have the ability to  
> produce an ordered list of preferences for those candidates who are
> not my favourite.  All I need to know for the plurality election is  
> "they are not my favourite"  -  I do not need to have any
> preferences among the non-favourite sub-set.

I mean that, in general, if we can choose a favorite in a plurality  
election, then we can produce a ranked list contingently by iterating  
the process. That is to say, asking a voter to produce a ranked list  
in this manner is in principle no more difficult than choosing a  
single favorite (albeit involving more effort in that the selection  
has to be repeated). And absent enough information to implement a  
successful strategy, the result ought to be optimum for methods like  
IRV and Condorcet.

That is, creating such a list is merely a series of "who is my  
favorite" applied to a shrinking set of candidates.

That's in contrast to approval and range voting, where the voter is  
asked to do "something else".

I'm not making a particularly important point here, only that if a  
voter can pick a favorite (as required for plurality), then a voter  
can build an ordered list.