[EM] Remember Toby

[Juho Laatu]

On 9.6.2011, at 5.48, Jameson Quinn wrote:

> 
> > It seems I have to give one more example to cover also
> > cases where the difference between major an minor candidates
> > is not that clear.
> >
> > 26: A>B
> > 25: B>A
> > 49: C
> >
> > Again, if two of the B supporters vote B>C, then B wins.
> > If some A and B supporters truncate in order to defend
> > against burying or as a general safety measure against the
> > other competing grouping (A and B supporters may not guess
> > right which one of them will have more votes), then C wins.
> > Before the election A and B groupings could both claim that
> > they are bigger and therefore they should truncate, and all
> > the voters of the other grouping should rank also the
> > candidate of the other grouping.
> >
> > This second example comes close to the traditional Approval
> > strategy related problems where near clone
> > parties/candidates fight about who must approve whom. The
> > strategic problems of approval as a tie-breaker and winning
> > votes are also quite closely related.
> 
> The method isn't perfect, no.
> 
> I don't believe this kind of scenario has a good resolution. I think in
> practice one of those candidates will drop out, and while that's bad,
> I don't think we can do much about it.
> 
> I'm not claiming that this scenario has a perfect resolution, but I do think that SODA does pretty well here. By providing perfect information on which group is bigger (25 vs 26 in the above), by reducing the players in the game of chicken from thousands to two, and by providing incentives in terms of future credibility to those two players to behave in at least an arguably-honest fashion, I think that SODA would dramatically reduce the chances of a car crash, or even the wrong car ending up in the ditch.

In this example SODA certainly is an improvement over basic Approval. There is a risk that some A and B supporters will cast bullet votes without delegation. Does that mean that one should try to discourage this kind of truncation. Actually the method already does so if bullet vote by default means that the vote is a delegated vote. Maybe the most risky scenarios are just like in this example, and things would be quite ok if voters that do not delegate would approve at least two candidates.

Juho


> 
> JQ
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