[EM] Strategic voting in Condorcet & Range N-canddt elections

[Juho Laatu]

--- On Wed, 10/6/09, Warren Smith <warren.wds at gmail.com> wrote:

> 1. only A or B can win.  Others neglectibly unlikely,
> so neglect them,
> dammit.  Be utterly convinced that no matter what,
> nobody besides A &
> B can win.
> 2. method is monotone.
> Period.
> 
> Now.  In that case, in any monotone method, an A-top
> B-bottom vote
> is always maximally strategic, in the sense that if ANY
> vote you can
> cast will make A win (and remember, only A or B can win -
> we agreed on
> that earlier)  then a vote
> of this form will always do the job.
> 
> OK? So, assuming strategic voters know that theorem, why
> would they do
> anything else?

Did I miss something? Isn't a sincere
vote an optimal vote here if we talk
about ranked methods? Why vote any
other way if a sincere vote does the
job? (Or are the voters so strategic
that they enjoy casting a non-sincere
vote?)

In research we typically make the
simplifying assumption that the only
thing that matters is who wins. In
real life elections also the other
positions and the results of different
candidates do matter. Therefore people
do not treat those candidates that are
unlikely to win indifferently. This is
one more reason to vote sincerely even
if some other approach would give the
same winner.

Juho