[EM] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?

[Juho Laatu]

On 24.6.2013, at 16.06, Benjamin Grant wrote:

> So, as far as *I* can see, this converts Score Voting into Approval voting.  The only people who would bother to vote sincerely are:
> 1)      Those who truly prefer Gore highest and Bush lowest (or vice versa), because there’s no strategic downside.


You seem to assume that voters with opinion 'Gore:75, Nader: 90, Bush: 10’ are not strategic when they vote 'Gore:75, Nader: 100, Bush: 0’. There are thus two possible levels of sincereness, either people who think that all candidates are about equally good should vote that way, or if they should exaggerate and tell that the worst one of them is worth 0 points and the best one is worth 100 points.

> Am I substantially wrong about any of this?

I think you are generally very right about this.

> It’s days like these that I feel that there *is* no way to elect people that is fair and right. L

All methods have some problems. But the problems are not always so bad that they would invalidate the method. I'd propose to study also the Condorcet compliant methods. I note that they already popped up in the later discussions and you more or less already promised to study them.

When compared to Range style utility measuring style Condorcet methods take another approach by allowing majorities to decide. With sincere (Range) preferences 55: A=100 B=90, 45: B=100 A=0 majority based methods allow A to win. Althoug B has clearly higher sum of utiliy, it is also a fact that if one would elect B, B would be opposed by 55% majority. A would be supported by 55% majority. Not a pretty sight to watch, but that's how majority oriented systems are suposed to work. Maybe the majority philosophy is that you will get a ruler that can rule (and there is no mutiny), instead of getting a ruler whose proposals would be voted against every time by 55% majority in the parliament or in public elections.

Juho



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