[EM] voting strategy with rank-order-with-equality ballots

Warren Smith warren.wds at gmail.com
Mon Jun 8 18:53:32 PDT 2009


One problem is nobody really has a good understanding of what good strategy is.

If one believes that range voting becomes approval voting in the
presence of strategic voters (often, anyhow)...

One might similarly speculate that
strategic voters in a system such as Schilze beatpaths ALLOWING ballots
with both > and = (e.g. A>B=C=D>E=F is a legal ballot)  usually the
strategic vote
is "approval style" i.e. of form A=B=C>D=E=F, say, with just ONE ">".
One might then speculate that Schulze, just like range, then becomes
equivalent to approval voting for strategic voters.

Well...  how true or false is that?   Is Schulze with approval-style ballots
a better or worse voting system than plain approval?

How true is it that approval-style voting is "strategic" for Schulze?

I'd like to hear people's ideas on this question.  (And not
necessarily just for "Schulze" -- substitute other methods too, if you
prefer.)

The trouble is, range voting is simple. Simple enough that you can
reach a pretty full understanding of what strategic range voting is.
  (Which is not at all trivial,
but it can pretty much be done.) In contrast, a lot of Condorcet
systems including Schulze are complicated. Complicated enough that
making confident statements
about their behavior with strtagic voters (or even undertsnading what
strtagy IS) is
hard.

Frankly, I've heard various vague but confident claims about strategy
for Schulze & the like, and my impression is those making the claims
know very little about what they
are talking about.  I also know very little on this, the difference is
I admit it :)


-- 
Warren D. Smith
http://RangeVoting.org  <-- add your endorsement (by clicking
"endorse" as 1st step)
and
math.temple.edu/~wds/homepage/works.html



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