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

[Juho Laatu]

Yes, cyclic votes are not very rational
nor required. Also some preference
strengths may be illogical (e.g. when
opinion A>C is weaker than either of
A>B and B>C).

In competitive elections weak opinions
may often not be needed in general.

Juho


--- On Tue, 27/1/09, Kristofer Munsterhjelm <km-elmet at broadpark.no> wrote:

> 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).