[EM] What should an ideal single-winner method achieve?

[fdpk69p6uq at snkmail.com]

On Thu, Jun 27, 2019 at 10:31 AM Toby Pereira wrote:

> Personally, the measure that makes most sense to me is to maximise
> utility. But this doesn't automatically mean score voting (where a score
> could simply be seen as a utility rating of a candidate), at least in part
> because strategies that voters adopt might reduce its effectiveness.
>

Yep, maximizing utility is the correct answer (= finding the candidate that
best represents the entire electorate), and the best way to get that kind
of information is with rated ballots.

http://leastevil.blogspot.com/2012/03/tyranny-of-majority-weak-preferences.html

Condorcet ranked systems will also typically elect the Utilitarian Winner,
but only because real-world voting behavior typically follows a spatial
model with unimodal distribution.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0304406815000518

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.504.3181&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Voter strategy on rated ballots is way overblown.

1. It doesn't happen much in real elections.
2. Even with strategic voters, rated systems still tend to produce more
representative outcomes than other systems.
3. There are many voting methods based on rated ballots besides pure Score
Voting, which have extra features to discourage strategic exaggeration.
STAR, 321, MJ, IRNR, etc.  Maligning pure Score, as if it's the only way to
tally rated ballots, is a bit of a strawman argument.
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