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<pre><br>Abd:<br><br>Thanks for the flattery, but I don't claim to always live up to it, because errors<br>are part of voting system discussion, and I routinely make at least my share of them.<br><br>These days don't get so many opportunities to return to the computer, and so this<br>reply will almost surely have to be in installments. I've been away from the computer<br>since Friday.<br><i>
</i>>><i>
</i>>><i> >If you rank your favorite, F, in 1st place, s/he gets a majority,
</i>>><i> >even though s/he doesn't win, because someone else has a higher
</i>>><i> >majority.
</i>>><i>
</i>>><i>That's apparently quite unusual. Even if multple votes in first rank
</i>>><i>are allowed -- they certainly should be -- most voters will not use them.
</i>><i>
</i>><i>
</i>><i>You don't have sufficient information to make that prediction.
</i>
Sure I do. There are some scenarios that can be asserted that can
lead to a conclusion that if overvoting is allowed in first rank,
<br>[endquote]<br><br>Overvoting is equal-ranking, correct?<br><br>You continued:<br><br>voters will use it strategically. Otherwise, from what we know about
Approval Voting, and from the history of Bucklin in certian
elections, I *predict* that most voters won't use them. Mike, do you
have sufficient information to show that this is unlikely to be true?<br><br>[endquote]<br><br>Certainly, at least as regards Approval: Right now, many or nearly all progressives, <br>people who want policies more progressive, humane, or innovative than those of the Democrats, insist<br>on "pragmatically" holding their noses and voting for the Democrat in Plurality. So,<br>what will they do in Approval? They'll continue voting for the Democrat, but will also<br>vote for everyone who is better than the Democrat. They'll vote for at least two candidates.<br>Nader and Gore, for instance, if they prefer Nader, but feel a need to vote for Gore as a<br>lesser-evil.<br><br>As for ABucklin (ER-Bucklin), no one can say for sure. It's my perception that often<br>one's best strategy will be to only vote for a set of candidates at first rank position.<br>When there are completely unacceptable candidates who could win, one's best strategy is to<br>top-rank all of the acceptables and not rank anyone else.<br><br>When the fear about failing to elect one of the better candidates isn't so great, one might<br>want to distinguish between some of them by ranking them at several rank-levels, though that<br>increases the risk that someone else will win. But sometimes<br>maybe not. Imagine an Approval election in which the ABucklin option is allowed. If someone you don't<br>like has an early majority, maybe largely from Approval ballots, then you're out of luck. Candidates<br>in your ranking who haven't yet received your Abucklin votes lose because you've missed your chance<br>to help them (as you could have if you'd top-ranked them). Looking at ABucklin as an option in an Approval<br>election, that vote-management option doesn't look like necessarily always a good idea. That suggests<br>that, in an ABucklin elecion, voting Approval-style might often be the best way to vote. But that's just<br>my subjective impression.<br><br> <br><br> ><i> My answer
</i>><i>to that is that plumping is a valid good strategy if no one but your favorite
</i>><i>is acceptable to you, or if you're sure that s/he will win if you don't rank
</i>><i>anyone else.
</i>
"Plumping" here means? I get two possible meanings. It means bullet
voting, entirely, or it means only voting for one in first rank.<br><br>[endquote]<br><br>Yes, "plumping" is voting for only one candidate. <br><br> Many voters only care about voting for their favorite, no matter what
system you give them, unless you *force* them to add additional
preferences. <br><br>[endquote]<br><br>But not many progressives, regrettably. Nearly all progressives refuse to vote for<br>their favorite, voting instead for a "lesser-evil".<br><br>There's no reason to believe that all those people will stop voting for a lesser-evil<br>in the 1st Approval election. But they'll be able to also vote for everyone who is better.<br><br>But yes, after the 1st Approval election, when the reported vote totals show that a progressive candidate can beat a Republican,<br>hopefully many or most of those voters will stop voting for the Democrat, and will only vote<br>for their genuine favorite(s). Maybe for their one most favorite candidate. Maybe for several<br>best candidates who are all significantly better than the others. All of the Approval strategies<br>that we've discussed here amount to voting for every candidate who is better than your expectation<br>for the election.<br><br>From conversations with Democrat-voters, it's my opinion that, among those who have actually looked at or listened to candidates' and parties'<br>policy proposals, no one considers the Democrat their favorite. I don't think that the Democrats<br>have any serious favorite-voters. They're only lesser-evils. Their genuine support doesn't exist. With<br>the enactment of Approval, those fictitious hollow-men known as Democrats will cease to appear to exist.<br><br>Indeed, that was the thinking behind Carroll's invention
of Asset Voting.
><i>Those were only municipal elections, of course. You can't use them to predict
</i>><i>voting in national or state elections. In important elections,
</i>><i>people would soon
</i>><i>learn what voting strategy is in their best interest.
</i>
Let's start with small scale elections, eh? First of all, there are
as yet no national elections in the U.S.<br><br>[endquote]<br><br>I just mean elections for national office. So I include elections for presidents and congress-members <br>(including senators) as national elections. Of course I should say "national-office elections" instead<br>of "national elections".<br><br>Innovation is easier to achieve locally, but it takes a while for local innovation to filter up to<br>the national-office level. It would be nice if, somehow, Approval could be enacted for state or national<br>offices without going through the long local-offices-first process.<br><br>I like ABucklin, and it seems to me that the best route to it, the natural route, is as an option<br>in Approval elections. As I often say, it's difficult to oppose or criticize an option. After all, how<br>someone uses their Approval vote will be understood to be their business. So how could anyone object to<br>a vote-management option such as ABucklin, in Approval elections?<br><br>But I feel that the real improvement on Approval is getting rid of the co-operation/defection problem. That's<br>accomplished by AOC, GMAT and MMT. Options such as those, for an Approval election, (they aren't mutually compatible as options in the same<br>election) are therefore the ones that I'd suggest first. Later I'd suggest ACBucklin or AOCBucklin (wherein a voter could optionally make<br>any non-top listing of a candidate conditional). <br><br>In ordinary non-conditional ABucklin, of course the C/D problem could be dealt with in the various ways we've<br>discussed for ordinary Approval and RV. So ordinary ABucklin isn't without merit. It's just that I personally<br>feel that, as Approval-election vote-management options, AOC, GMAT or MMT offer a more important kind of improvement over ordinary<br>Approval.<br><br>, the largest jurisdiction to
hold an election is a state. What we think of as presidential
elections are actually local elections of pledged electors.<br><br>[endquote]<br><br>An uncontroversial tacit agreement in these discussion is that the president should be elected<br>by a direct national election, dispensing with the electoral college.<br><br>Of course it could be reasonably argued that parliamentary government would be better, and I have no quarrel with that.<br>But proposing a better way to elect the president is much more modest than proposing the drastic change from presidential<br>to parliamentary system.<br><br>You continued:<br><br>There is a lot of crap out there on what strategy is in the voter's
best interest<br><br>[endquote]<br><br>...like the crap that says we should vote for a lesser-evil in Plurality. Maybe sometimes vote<br>for a compromise, the most winnable acceptable candidate, or a candidate agreed-upon by a similar-believing<br>large set of voters. But never vote for an evil, even if a lesser one.<br><br><br>You continued:<br><br>, and there is a large class of voters who vote for what
is in the society's best interest (in their opinion, of course, but
these voters will value *consensus* and will recognize that getting
their own preference is not necessarily best for the society).<br><br>[endquote]<br><br>Maybe some will vote that way in RV. I don't know. But surely most people feel<br>that their favorite candidate would be best for society, and that has a lot to do with<br>why he's their favorite. Might some know that their candidate is bad for society, but good for<br>their own private special interest? Maybe, but probably most people have convinced themselves<br>that he's best for society in some meaningful sense.<br><br>To be coninued...<br><br>Mike Ossipoff<br>
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