[EM] Voter strategising ability

[robert bristow-johnson]

On 7/19/14 4:04 AM, Juho Laatu wrote:
> On 12 Jul 2014, at 22:34, Gervase Lam<gervase at madasafish.com>  wrote:
>
>> Given the above, I really find it hard to see a good proportion of
>> voters doing the correct strategic calculations.
> Yes, _in_typical_public_elections_ voters can reliably implement only some very simple strategies.
>

really, the only "strategy" (if i were to call it such) that voters ever 
employ in public elections (which use, in most cases, single mark 
ballots) is that of "compromising".  sometimes voters vote for their 
second or third choice, instead of voting for their first choice, 
because they expect that their second choice has a much better chance of 
winning than their first choice.

the whole purpose of the ranked ballot was to remove that burden of 
tactical voting from voters.  and the whole problem with IRV or STV or 
Alternative Vote or Preferential Vote or whatever they're calling it, is 
that the tabulation procedure sometimes resolves the election 
incorrectly (as it did in Burlington Vermont in 2009).  in my opinion, 
if there is a Condorcet Winner and the election is resolved to elect a 
different winner, that is decidedly a mistake since a winner was chosen 
when a greater number of voters actually marked their ballot that they 
preferred someone else to be elected.

and Range or Score Voting and also Approval Voting, require voters to 
strategize in the voting booth because they have to decide how much to 
score their second choice (or whether to approve their second choice).  
that is not strategy-free.


-- 

r b-j                  rbj at audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."