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<div class="moz-text-html" lang="x-western"> Ralph Suter wrote (Wed.Dec.15):<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>Will someone on the list who has studied range voting and compared it to
Condorcet, approval, and other methods please comment on Doug Greene's paper? He
appears to be saying that range voting is superior to all other single winner
methods. Are there good arguments against this conclusion? Does range voting
have serious flaws? If so, could someone briefly summarize them?</pre>
</blockquote>
CB: Range Voting is fine if all one cares about is "minimizing Bayesian
regret" (Warren D. Smith, one of the paper's<br>
authors) or meeting the "Favourite Betrayal Criterion" (i.e. never having
a strategic incentive to Compromise).<br>
To cheerfully assert, as W.D. Smith does, that "minimizing Bayesian regret"
trumps majority rule is tantamount to saying<br>
that more emotional voters should have more power than less emotional voters,
which in my view is nonsensical and unfair.<br>
<br>
One of the aims of a voting method should be to minimize the advantage
well informed strategists have over sincere voters.<br>
Under Range Voting, well informed strategists will have much more clout
than naive sincere voters. <br>
To me, it is axiomatic that a single-winner voting method should, with sincere
voting, reduce to FPP when there are only two<br>
candidates. RV doesn't.<br>
No voting method is invulnerable to informed strategy, but meeting No Zero-Information
Strategy is very easy to meet, so<br>
why not at least achieve that? RV doesn't. <br>
<br>
The paper Ralph refers to, by Smith, Quintal and Greene is paper 82 at <br>
<pre><i><a href="http://math.temple.edu/%7Ewds/homepage/works.html">http://math.temple.edu/~wds/homepage/works.html</a></i></pre>
On page 11, they propose what I believe is a nutty idea on how to handle
blank entries.<br>
"So we recommend allowing blank entries, and averaging each candidate's
non-blank entries to compute their final score."<br>
They specify that making all the blanks 0s (the lowest possible score)
is "inferior". <br>
<br>
That means that if all the voters except one are sincere, and the sincere
voters all ignore some candidate that they know<br>
nothing about, and also give out no maximum scores; and the single other
voter gives the unknown candidate a maximum score;<br>
then the unknown candidate will be elected, with one vote!<br>
<br>
I dislike methods that pose any sort of problem for voters who simply want
to vote their full sincere ranking. Approval is<br>
horrible in this respect: voters must agonize on where to place their approval
cutoff. Range Voting with many more<br>
available slots than candidates also can pose a problem: voters must agonize
on exactly how many points to give each<br>
candidate, in the knowledge that any point could be decisive (which is not
he case in "Approval Margins", the method I<br>
like that uses that type of ballot.)<br>
<br>
Mike Ossipoff (Thu.Dec.30) speaks up for 3-slot CR as being more saleable
and appealing to voters than Approval,<br>
and more proposable than high-intensity CR or unrestricted ranking methods
because of the limitations of current<br>
voting equipment. <br>
That is fine, but is 3-slot CR the best 3-slot method? I say definitely
not! In my humble opinion the best 3-slot method<br>
is 3-slot Schwartz // Disapproval. <br>
(I also consider my "Majority Approval Runoff" 3-slot idea to be far superior
to 3-slot CR.)<br>
<br>
<br>
Chris Benham<br>
<pre><i> <a href="http://math.temple.edu/%7Ewds/homepage/works.html">
</a></i></pre>
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