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Re: Another proposal.



On Tue, Nov 19, 2002 at 05:45:03PM -0500, Andrew Pimlott wrote:

>> The only real issue is the one where your sincere vote:

>> 	A S D    (normal option, supermajority option, default option)

>> will cause S to win (thanks to you letting it pass its supermajority), but
>> your insincere vote:

>> 	A D S

>> will cause A to win (thanks to S being eliminated early, by not passing its
>> supermajority).

> In this case, I think it would be fair for the insincere reversal to
> casue D to win, thus sending the matter back to discussion.  This
> would not in fact be "strategy" in an voting sense, rather in a
> larger political sense, and is thus outside the scope of a voting
> system.

> But causing A to win is not fair.

If your actual preference is A S D, then voting A D S is still an
insincere vote by definition.  Note that in this case, the voter *really,
honestly prefers* either of the two non-default options over the default,
but the result he *most* prefers will *lose* the vote *IFF* he votes
and votes sincerely.  This is a flaw, because not voting or voting
insincerely gives a better outcome from this voter's POV than voting
sincerely does.

You also talk about only allowing insincere votes to cause the default
option to win, but you can't distinguish between sincere and insincere
votes in the system: the tallying process must itself protect against
strategic voting, and I don't see how you can devise a voting system that
would permit insincere votes to cause a win for "further discussion"
without also permitting insincere votes to cause a win for other options.

-- 
Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer

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