[EM] Why care about later-no-harm or prohibiting candidate burial?

[Jonathan Lundell]

On Feb 21, 2011, at 2:07 PM, Dave Ketchum wrote:
> 
> HOORAY for thinking!  Too rare around here!

Ms Dopp misunderstands burial. Burial is specifically the ability to improve the outcome for your favorite candidate by insincerely ranking your second-choice candidate last (actually a more general formulation of the same idea). That's why it's a strategy: the voter is motivated to misrepresent their true preferences in hopes of improving the outcome.

Burial works against compromise by encouraging voters to rank the potential compromise candidate last.

> 
> Dave Ketchum
> 
> On Feb 21, 2011, at 4:27 PM, Kathy Dopp wrote:
> 
>> I can't help wondering why anyone would think it beneficial to have
>> either later-no-harm or burial prevention in a voting method. Here is
>> why:
>> 
>> 1. later-no-harm prevents finding compromise candidates, and thus is
>> not a desirable feature of a voting method, and
>> 
>> 2. if a voter tries to bury a candidate, then logically it can only be
>> (unless the voter is acting against his own interests) because he
>> would rather have any other candidate more than the candidate he tries
>> to bury.  Allowing a voter to express which candidate he would like
>> least is a good feature, not a bad one.  All the talk about a voter
>> preferring in truth a candidate 2nd and then burying that candidate
>> below other candidates he prefers less, and thus giving those other
>> candidates he prefers even less a better chance, well is simply
>> illogical drivel.
>> 
>> So why all the talk of trying to invent voting methods that have two
>> very bad traits - later-no-harm and disallowing burial?  I don't see
>> why anyone would want to spend the time trying to devise such a flawed
>> voting method as to prohibit finding compromise candidates that more
>> voters like and to prohibit a voter from ability to contribute to
>> preventing his least favorite choice from winning.
>> 
>> Kathy
> 
> 
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