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

[Bob Richard]

Jonathan Lundell wrote:

 > ... if a voter can pick a favorite (as required for plurality),
 > then a voter can build an ordered list.

Only if abstention is an option beginning at any iteration. In other 
words, the voter has to have the option of saying, I will stay home 
rather than vote for any of the remaining candidates. Otherwise, the 
ability to order all of the candidates does not follow from the ability 
to pick one from a list longer than the list in the current iteration.

--Bob Richard


Jonathan Lundell wrote:
> 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.
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-- 
Bob Richard
Marin Ranked Voting
P.O. Box 235
Kentfield, CA 94914-0235
415-256-9393
http://www.marinrankedvoting.org