<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.6001.18565" name=GENERATOR>
<STYLE></STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Thanks, that confirms my understanding.
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The problem here in he UK is that in many seats we
do have 3 big parties, and in Scotland and Wales, where there are nationalist
parties included also, there are sometimes 4. (Northern Ireland has even
more!) In these cases not voting tactically under AV may have the reverse effect
to the voters intention. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Faced with examples of instances where AV can fall
prey to voter strategy, the contention of the more thoughtful members of
the Yes campaign is that, tactical voting may theoretically be possible under
AV, but only in very rare circumstances, or that AV makes it so difficult
to vote tactically that in practice no-one will bother. These are difficult
claims to counter by example alone.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT><FONT face=Arial size=2>There is a bit of research supporting that
view which is quoted in the Wikipedia piece "John J. Bartholdi III, James B.
Orlin (1991) </FONT><A class="external text"
href="http://www.isye.gatech.edu/~jjb/papers/stv.pdf" rel=nofollow><FONT
face=Arial size=2>"Single transferable vote resists strategic
voting,"</FONT></A><FONT face=Arial size=2>" I can't say my understanding of it
is all that great, but it seems to be based on computer modelling of elections
to find out how often tactical voting can make a difference. My questions are, I
suppose, how good is this research? Is there other research with computer models
that contradicts this result? How well can we quantify the
differences?</FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV></BODY></HTML>