[EM] How to find the voters' honest preferences

[Forest Simmons]

On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 3:34 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm <km_elmet at t-online.de
> wrote:

> On 09/09/2013 11:50 PM, Forest Simmons wrote:
>
>> Kristofer,
>>
>> Thanks for your insights and considerations regarding the method and my
>> questions.
>>
>> It is true as you noted that there is no game theoretic incentive to
>> vote insincerely on the second ballot,(unless this election is
>> considered as part of an ongoing game including future elections as
>> well), it is also true, as you point out, that there is no incentive to
>> vote complete preferences on the second ballot.
>>
>> You then say ...
>>
>> "If you just want to find a winner, then an ordinary runoff might work
>> as well: select the finalists as above, then have a majority-rule
>> election in the second round."
>>
>> The trouble with this ordinary runoff idea is that the runoff stage
>> (potentially) over-rides the strategic pairwise preferences implicit in
>> the three slot ballots.  In other words it throws out our burial
>> disincentive.
>>
>
> Isn't that easily fixed? Consider the runoff part of your method
> description:
>
>
>  The runoff between them is decided by the voters' pairwise
>>>>
>>> >>> preferences as expressed on the three slot ballots (when these
> >>> finalists are not rated equally thereon), or (otherwise) on the
> >>> ordinal ballots when the three slot ballot makes no distinction
> >>> between them.
>
> Couldn't you adapt this to a manual runoff? Something like:
>
> 1. Determine the virtual runoff candidates X and Y.
> 2. If there's a pairwise difference between the two on the three slot
> ballots, then whoever it favors, wins.
> 3. If there's no difference between the two, then go to a manual tiebreak
> runoff.
>
> Or would that mean runoffs would happen so rarely that the electorate
> would fail to get used to them?
>

It could be done that way, but my intention was to take into account that
some three slots ballots might not distinguish the two finalists even
though others would.  The ones that do distinguish them are used for that
purpose, but the ones that do not distinguish them make use of the higher
resolution preferences.
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