[EM] remember Toby Nixon?

[Kevin Venzke]

Hi,

--- En date de : Mar 24.5.11, matt welland <matt at kiatoa.com> a écrit :
> What is "CW"? Us "part time readers" would be forever
> grateful if some
> kind soul would put a magic decoder ring on the wiki.

CW is the Condorcet winner. This is a candidate who would beat any other
candidate head-to-head. This could be defined using the ballots, or by
the sincere preferences of the voters. In either case there may not be
a CW.

> > On the other hand Approval requires reliable polling
> information for informed strategy.  This fact makes 
> > Approval vulnerable to manipulation by
> disinformation.
> 
> Is this a generally accepted truth? I don't think I agree
> with it, can
> you point me to more information or explain? The only
> strategy in
> approval is to hold your nose and check off the front
> runner you despise
> because you don't want the other front runner you despise
> more to win.

I think that's mostly it. You need to know who the frontrunners are.
In my simulations most scenarios result in there being two perceived
frontrunners (especially if voter and candidate opinions are based on
issue space) so I don't think this would change or become more 
complicated.

What some find unappealing about Approval is that if nobody does any
polling and everyone just votes above some threshold of acceptability 
that each voter defines for himself, there is no telling who will win.
But we basically already have this situation with Plurality, if everyone
just votes for his favorite (and nobody drops out of the race to prevent
a disaster).

Kevin Venzke