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

[Juho Laatu]

Yes, well organized and undivided groupings
tend to have somewhat more voting power
than fragmented collections of similar
minded people.

There may be many reasons why people can
trust that there will be also other voters
that will vote similarly, e.g.
1) A well coordinated group with explicit
   or implicit voting recommendations.
2) I think this way and I plan to use my
   one small vote this way. I assume that
   there are many people that have similar
   preferences. Probably they will have
   similar thoughts and they will vote in
   some similar way. Therefore I can trust
   that my vote will be part of a "trend"
   that will have some meaningful impact
   in these elections.

These are the two extremes. One with lots
of coordination and one that is simply
based on the logic that although I make
my decisions totally independently and
alone there will be others that are
likely to have similar thoughts.

These considerations may include also
strategic thinking.  A US voter could e.g.
be confident that many of the Nader
supporters will vote for Gore (and many of
them will vote for Nader).

One can thus study group strategies and
group based equilibrium without assuming
that there would be some central
coordination of the groups and their
strategies.

Maybe my point is just that if the voter
feels that his/her opinions are not very
exceptional he/she can trust that there
will be a large number of people thinking
and voting in the same or similar way.
Although the weight of one vote is
marginal, in most cases it is wiser to
base one's decisions on how to vote on the
assumption that one will not be alone. In
a way one can thus influence with the 10%
or whatever meaningful voting power that
may well change the outcome of the
election.

(Note also that people who vote for some
improbable candidate, e.g. themselves,
and are sure that their vote will be
marginal may still do so for other
reasons than in the hope of becoming
elected (a bit like some of the Nader
voters). Even few votes might be
meaningful as a protest or to make that
candidate's election more probable in
the next elections or to increase
his/her weight in some totally
different arena.)

Juho


--- On Wed, 17/6/09, Raph Frank <raphfrk at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 4:50 PM, Juho
> Laatu<juho4880 at yahoo.co.uk>
> wrote:
> > Do you mean that one individual vote
> > practically never changes the result
> > of a large election?
> >
> > One can see this from two viewpoints.
> > 1) can I change the result
> > 2) can I and similar minded people
> >   together change the result
> 
> Well, you only control yourself.
> 
> In principle, groups where it is expected that you vote +
> where your
> are asked if you bothered could tend to have higher
> turnouts.
> 
> However, once you actually are in the polling booth, then
> you can
> somewhat ignore the issue of how the person got
> there.  (but it would
> still have an effect on how you model other voters'
> behaviour.)
>