On Tue, Nov 19, 2002 at 05:45:03PM -0500, Andrew Pimlott wrote: > On Tue, Nov 19, 2002 at 01:53:46PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: > > The default option isn't > > something you can be particularly "sincere" about > > Your point here being that even if the default wins, the vote will > be held again, and little is lost. Yes?
Here's a way of looking at it: Even if the voter thinks, in his heart of hearts, that A and B are both better than nothing, he can still be sincere about preferring "no action" to either or both, _in any given vote_. This could be considered manipulative and dishonest in some senses--or, it could be considered politically savvy. But from a voting point of view, the preference for "further discussion" is sincere and not strategic. I think a voting method should discourage voting strategy, not political strategy. So it's absolutely ok if ranking "further discussion" higher causes "further discussion" to win; but not ok if it causes another option to win. (Indeed, this is one of the criteria for a voting system on electionmethods.org.) Eliminate early leads to voting strategy, which leads to madness (in the form of difficult to analyze situations and voter uncertainty). Andrew
