[EM] Range strategy pathological example (was Re: IRV vs Plurality)

[Jameson Quinn]

2010/1/26 Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <abd at lomaxdesign.com>

>
> To summarize this, there is no advice from anyone that voting the
> normalized utilities shown, without any regard for election probabilities,
> is a sensible way to vote Range.


But some fraction of voters will not be sensible. And there is no reason to
assume that this fraction will be evenly distributed across political
factions. In fact, there is reason to imagine the contrary.



> What Mr. Quinn has done is to suppose that one whole faction of voters
> votes sensibly (with regard for who the frontrunners are, basically) and
> another faction votes ignorantly, assigning most of their vote strength to
> an irrelevant race.
>

Yes. This is my fear. (Obviously not 100% strategy vs. 0% strategy; but even
a smaller gap could give undemocratic results if the true margins were
tighter.)


>
> Is this a partisan election? Mr. Quinn hints that it is. Where are the
> approval cutoffs?


Stop right there. There will always be some voters who have never heard of
approval cutoffs.

I understand the limitations of my example. I still think it is a real
weakness for Range - actually, the only real weakness. Range is still one of
the best systems out there. But this is a reason to explore its weaknesses,
not to ignore them - especially when these weaknesses are probably fixable.
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