[EM] Chicken Dilemma--To whom is it a problem? (pt 1)

[Juho Laatu]

On 17.10.2013, at 5.47, Michael Ossipoff wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 7:58 PM, Kevin Venzke <stepjak at yahoo.fr> wrote:

>> Your last paragraph is thought-provoking though. You are a voter
>> who won't accept a mutual majority with Democrats. Would you consider
>> doing so, under Benham/Woodall?

> Though Dem isn't worse than Repub, it's largely a matter of principle
> with me, to not endorse the Republocrats by voting for any of them. A
> matter of aesthetics too.

Yes, this is thought-provoking. We usually define rational voting so that we refer only to the outcome of this elecion in question. In that sense, do you agree that you would be an irrational voter? You could help electing the second worst instead of the worst (risk free, let's assume that), but you refuse to do so. On the other hand this definition of rational voting is not the whole truth. In real life sometimes it makes sense e.g. not to vote at all to carry a message to the system that the election is no good. I guess this is what you are doing, in a rational way. I guess the question is then, what if you would have an election method that would be better than the current one, and also others than republocrats would have been elected a few times, would it be possible that you would then change your voting behaviour and start ranking all the (meaningful) candidates?

Juho