[EM] the "bullet voting" bogeyman for range/approval voting

[robert bristow-johnson]

thanks for responding, Warren.

On Aug 28, 2010, at 10:56 AM, Warren Smith wrote:

> The idea has been raised (mainly by instant runoff proponents at  
> FairVote
> and based apparently intense intuition but zero evidence)
> that approval or range voting will in practice degenerate to  
> plurality voting.

that FairVote may have raised the argument was not known by me.  i had  
my own reasons, be they similar to those of FairVote or not.

> Preliminary indications, based on evidence, are that this is not so:
>    http://rangevoting.org/BulletBugaboo.html
>
> However the amount of evidence presented there, is not all that large.
> I believe one can get more data...  but I haven't yet.

i have to confess that often here at the EM list, i have trouble  
following some of the simulation/scenarios presented unless they are  
used to disprove a general claim that So&so system is immune to some  
strategy or anomaly of some sort.  but sometimes folks are drawing  
broader, more general conclusions.  i don't quite get it.

and i don't quite get whether a bunch of people bullet voted in the  
Burlington IRV elections has much to do with the Approval or Score.   
all's i think about that is either they really only preferred one  
candidate and all of the rest were equally bad.  or, out of spite,  
they were saying to themselves "I hate IRV.  I'm gonna vote only for  
my guy, goddammit.  Then I'm gonna bitch about how my vote didn't  
count if my candidate is eliminated before the final round."  it was,  
to me, interesting about how some of the most rabid IRV opponents here  
in Burlington were prog-hating Democrats.  those bullet voters are the  
only ones (among the big 3) who can claim that they were left outa the  
final round.  it's a bogus argument, in my opinion.  they could have  
thought about it and made up their minds about the Prog v. GOP by  
election day, rather than demand the convenience of not having to make  
that decision until 3 weeks later.

(i am not sure why there is this weird animus between some Dems and  
Progs other than maybe a rivalry for liberal voters in Vermont.   
sometimes Dems are pissed at Progs, or a particular Prog, for fielding  
a candidate that causes both to lose to the GOP.  this is what  
happened for guv when Howard Dean stepped down and the seat was open.   
coincidently the loser that should have won, was the candidate i was  
volunteering for this last primary.)

>  Suggest some more?

for me, my own experience and motivation at the polling place.

> [In particular, I am looking for some IRV elections for which we have
> full ballot data,
> in which vote-truncation was allowed, with
>  * 8 candidates
>  * 17 candidates

i don't have experience with that.  i've participated in two IRV  
elections.  one in 2006 where the IRV winner was also both the  
Condorcet winner and the plurality winner.

> and several thousand or more voters, and reasonably important, to  
> compare
> with some approval voting elections.  Suggest?]


what i would like to know is how you would map ranked-order ballots to  
either score ballots or approval ballots?  i think that it is  
reasonable (but not always accurate) to assume that the traditional  
"single affirmative vote" ballot can be mapped from a ranked-order  
ballot by selecting for the former the top ranked candidate from the  
latter.

--

r b-j                  rbj at audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."