Re: For our own good: splitting the vote. Thoughts?
On Thu, Nov 13 2008, Robert Millan wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 11:00:29AM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Well, splitting a vote into multiple ballots, with options
>> referring to the same outcome, is a horrendously bad idea -- since the
>> massive amounts of strategic voting possibilities will taint the final
>> result.
>
> On the contrary. It is excess of overlapping options that prompt for
> strategic voting. For example, if I don't care much between option A
> and option B, but prefer either of them to option C, I might give
> equal weight to A and B in order to prevent circular ambiguities.
>
> In fact it is only starting with the presence of a 3rd option that strategy
> gets into the game:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbard-Satterthwaite_theorem
That theorem is silly. Firstly, all it is saying is that if you
only have one or two options there can be no tactical voting (duh).
Secondly, it says in any voting system there will be conditions
where voter with full knowledge of how the other voters are to vote and
of the rule being used would have an incentive to vote in a manner that
does not reflect his preferences. Who has perfect knowledge?
Thirdly, there are ways in which we can mitigate the actual
cases in which such conditions are present; and our voting method is
one where such cases are rare; and we should not have to worry about
ever having a third option on the ballot.
If anyone is interested, I can send them, offline, pointers to
the properties in Schulze's method, which we use, and the potential
benefit of using MAM, which I am considering coding for devotee.
manoj
--
Marriage is a romance in which the hero dies in the first chapter.
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/~srivasta/>
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