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

[Jameson Quinn]

I think your entire argument below essentially boils down to three ideas.
"1) Voters will be smarter than that. 2) If they are stupid, they'll be
stupid evenly. 3) If they're unevenly stupid, the smart ones should win, and
will anyway.". Of course, you're partly right on 1) and 2). But in order to
make the problem go away, you'd have to be 100% right - and you'll never
find a country with 100% smart people. And you're dead wrong on 3). If Range
has a problem with "stupid" voters getting beaten by "smart" voters, that's
a real problem, and one not shared by other voting systems. (Also, the
"stupid" voters could be just ethically opposed to voting strategically.)

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

> At 02:53 PM 1/26/2010, Jameson Quinn wrote:Let's not even get into the
> problems involved in "unanimous strategy." 40% of voters who have the
> discipline to implement a "unanimous strategy" could basically wipe the
> floor with everyone else if they want to.
>

Not in Plurality. Probably not in Condorcet. Not in IRV. Possibly not even
in Bucklin. This is a problem with Range. (Borda is beneath mention here,
and Approval is a kind of Range.)


>
>  Thus, to me, Range's problem with strategy is not merely "hot air". Not
>> that it's insoluble - for instance, a Range ballot with options of only 0,
>> 1, 998, 999, and 1000 would solve the strategy problem by forcing all voters
>> to use strategy (and thus would reduce to Approval, with the advantage that
>> it could be post-analyzed to find a CW). There are other ways to fix the
>> problem, too. And this one disadvantage of Range should be weighed against
>> Range's many clear advantages. But it is a real problem.
>>
>
> No. Not real, because the scenario is utterly unrealistic unless voters
> have somehow been deceived into thinking that they should vote stupidly.
> From the utilities given, and the election context, I'll predict real voting
> patterns:


.... and then you go on to predict patterns which would essentially fit on
my proposed "idiot-proof" Range ballots. In other words, you think people
will all naturally be smart, whereas I think that some encouragement may
help.

Jameson Quinn
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