January 06, 2004
Voting Methods
I'm once again thinking about voting methods.I've managed to further narrow down people's resistance to certain voting styles. Mainly, when there are situations where someone has a lot of first place votes, but someone else with broader consensus support, they are uncomfortable with the first person losing.
It's like they believe that the first candidate should get a "bonus" for the first place votes.
The reason they think that first place should get a bonus is because they imagine their own preferences. Usually when you have a first choice, it's because you don't care as much about the placement of the other choices.
In other words, imagine this hypothetical set of preferences:
Dean
Yes..x....................................No
Clark
Yes..................x....................No
Edwards
Yes......................x................No
Gephardt
Yes...........................x...........No
Lieberman
Yes...................................x...No
There's a bigger gap between the first choice and any of the other choices.
Here is where I want to point out to Abstract Person, however, that the gap is there because the voter wants it to be there. Not because there is some general rule that first place should always get a bonus.
What happens if someone is torn between their first two choices or only prefers one by a little bit, but knows they want either more than any of the other candidates? Giving a bonus to first choice and nowhere else would disenfranchise their preferences.
So I think the first-place bonus concept is a load of hooey. But, it brings up a lot of thinking about "intensity of preference".