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

Kristofer Munsterhjelm km-elmet at broadpark.no
Tue Jan 27 04:28:32 PST 2009


Juho Laatu wrote:
> Another approach to offering more
> flexibility (maybe not needed) and
> more strategy options (maybe not
> wanted) is to allow the voter to
> fill the pairwise matrix entries
> in whatever way. This means that
> also cycles can be recorded.
> 
> One can interpret the basic
> Condorcet rules so that they do
> not rule out this option. (The
> ballot format is not defined.)
> 
> (Are there good examples where
> these more flexible approaches
> would provide some definite
> improvements?)

I think that's too flexible. Allowing a single voter to give multiple 
votes (but at fractional power) can be justified by that the voter is 
judging the candidates on seperate metrics. The sum matrix is still a 
proper tournament matrix. However, letting the voter arrange his 
contribution to the Condorcet matrix as he wishes may let him move the 
matrix out of what could be reached by ordinary votes, which seems 
nonsensical.

If one desires such flexibility, it should at least be phrased in terms 
of contests. That is, setting M(A,B) to q means you prefer A to B by 
fraction q, or that A won in a "match" of some sort when facing B (such 
as with round-robin tournament matrices in sports).



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