[EM] Anyone got a good analysis on limitations of approval andrange voting?

[Terry Bouricius]

Matthew,

I'm not sure if it is quite at the layman level, but Prof. Nicloaus 
Tideman's recent book "Collective Decisions and Voting" has an analysis of 
vulnerability to strategic manipulation of virtually every single-winner 
voting method that has ever been proposed and concludes that Range Voting 
along with Borda and four other methods "have defects that are so serious 
as to disqualify them from consideration." (page 238). Range Voting 
advocates on this list dispute his definition of "resistance to strategy."

A somewhat more accessible (and available online for free) analysis of 
strategic vulnerability of various methods is in this doctoral paper by 
James Green-Armytage ("Strategic voting and Strategic Nomination: 
Comparing seven election methods"). He found that Range and Approval were 
just about the worst in terms of manipulability.
http://econ.ucsb.edu/graduate/PhDResearch/electionstrategy10b.pdf


Terry Bouricius


 ----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Matthew Welland" <matt at kiatoa.com>
To: "Election Methods Mailing List" <election-methods at electorama.com>
Sent: Saturday, November 07, 2009 3:12 PM
Subject: [EM] Anyone got a good analysis on limitations of approval 
andrange voting?


It seems to me that approval and range voting eliminate most of the
strategic opportunity in single winner elections and the marginal
improvement of other methods is fairly small. Can anyone point me to
analysis, preferably at a layman level, that contradicts or supports this
assertion?

Or, in succinct terms, what are the strategic flaws in approval or range
voting?

Thanks,

Matt
-=-
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