Re: Range Voting - the simpler better alternative to Condorcet voting
On Sun, Jun 03, 2007 at 11:22:06AM +0100, Barak A. Pearlmutter wrote:
> > Ireland uses STV, which is not a Condorcet voting system.
> Although true, from a voter's perspective they're pretty much
> identical:
>From the ignorant voter's perspective, yes. Given your previous post, I
understand completely why you would share that perspective.
> rank the candidates, any left unranked are implicitly at
> the bottom.
With the difference that with Condorcet, you can confidently say to
voters: "if you lie about your opinions of the candidates when you vote, you
are much more likely to hurt yourself than to help yourself, regardless of
how you think others will vote." Whether the voters accept this, or are
able to do the math themselves, is another matter; but the fact is that with
Range Voting, the *best* real-world outcome one can reasonably expect is
total strategic voting on the part of the electorate (some of the Range
Voting propaganda even encourages this outright!), whereas with Condorcet,
an informed electorate who doesn't act in a manner contrary to their own
self-interest is not an unreasonable aspiration.
And if your electorate is clever and/or sufficiently well-informed, that
means Condorcet is going to outperform Range Voting, no question.
> Furthermore, I would dare to venture that even our sophisticated Debian
> Developer voters by-and-large do not understand the minutia of our
> particular Condorcet resolution mechanism.
Perhaps not, but your claim that Debian developers vote strategically in DPL
elections is totally unsubstantiated. There's *nothing* dishonest about
ranking Bus^W a popular *partisan* candidate lower than a Liberta^W wacko
crank.
And if voters are voting their true preferences under Condorcet, it doesn't
really matter whether they understand *why* Condorcet works better.
--
Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
vorlon@debian.org http://www.debian.org/
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