[EM] Kristofer, contd.

[Michael Ossipoff]

This is my reply to the remainder of Kristofer's post:

Enough voters feel like this, and there would be a backlash.

[endquote]

Approval doesn't have a problem that Plurality doesn't have. You
haven't shown one, you know.

What you're saying above is just that you want a rank method, and that
you want to express all of your preferences.

If that's what you'd most like, then I recommend ICT.

But just fixing Pluruality's ridiculous rating-falisification
requirement would a lot more enactable, and would bring enormous
societal improvement.

You can dither forever, arguing about what is the ideal best. Dither
all you want to, because the voting system reforms are being
considered for here, not for there (No one claims that they're needed
there).

By the way, you spoke of how you vote in your PR elections. Since
you've opened the door to that topic, then which party do you vote
for?

Kristofer says:

Approval would in that respect then be like IRV: appearing sensible when
you have two + minor parties, but in a three-way race, the problems surface.

Nonsense. With only 2 parties, it's entirely irrelevant which voting
system is used. It's when there are more than two candidates that
Approval's
big advantages over Plurality and Condorcet are manifest.

 In contrast, in Condorcet the voters just rank.

[endquote]

...if they don't know what they're doing. Or if the election is 0-info
and non-u/a.

Kristofer says:

Black's theorem handles
the rest

[endquote]

Kristofer, do you know what "hand-waving" is? You're hand-waving.

Kristofer says:

 ** You seem to be more inclined to look at ballots in a strategic
manner in general, I think. For instance, when you said that you would
only use
a few ranks in (some Bucklin variant I don't remember), that struck me
as quite strange. Are not ranked ballots expressions of preferences? No
- not if they're primarily *strategic*.

[endquote]

That's right. If you're voting in your best instrumental interest,
then that's different from if you merely want to express your sincere
preferences.
Decide which it is that you want to do.

Kristofer says:

My initial puzzlement was at how
you directly jumped to the instrumental point of view.

[endquote]

American and British voters have shown that they nearly all vote
instrumentally, in order to help a "lesser-evil".

There are some times when non-instrumental voting is called for.

1. In some of the solutions to the defection problem.

2. In Plurality, where instrumental voting requires unavailable
information about where we should combine our support. Of course it
could be reasonably argued that our Plurality elections
are really  0-info, in which case sincere voting _is_ the
instrumentally best expectation-maximizing strategy.

Otherwise, yes, I would vote instrumentally.

Approval strategy is a difficult problem. What should we do? I tell
people to just vote for their genuine favorite. As I said, our
elections are really 0-info anyway,
and so sincere voting is the best instrumental strategy therefore.

If we could all vote sincerely in this year's Plurality election, then
we'd know where we stand, and what our best strategy is in subsequent
ones. But no, people
are going to do their usual lesser-evil giveaway.

I've suggested that we pick relatively unimportant state elections.
Have the non-Republocrat parties run in those elections, and let's use
those to find out the
actual numbers.

I've suggested that progressive parties and organizations do some
polling, nationally. The sample would be limited, but the results
could be
meaningfully aggregated for a national estimate. Count by ICT. Then,
give advice, to everyone who wants something better than the Democrat,
to vote for that ICT winner.

...or do a voting rights lawsuit to repeal Plurality's forced
falsification requirement. As I've said, the result is called
"Approval voting".

I'd vote instrumentally in Approval. Sincere and strategic voting
would be the same for me, because it is a u/a election.

In Plurality, if there is no organization, agreements or polling, I
believe in sincere voting.
Sincere voting is instrumentally optimal for Plurality in 0-info elections.

Mike Ossipoff
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