Andre Engels wrote:
2007/7/13, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net>et>:
There were 15540 votes on 4170 ballots;
that's an average of 3.73
votes per ballot. This suggests to me that contrary to what Erik has
suggested this still retains the deficiencies of strategic voting. If
possible it would be interesting to see how the ballots were distributed
on a number of votes per ballot basis.
It depends - what do you call the 'deficiencies' of strategic voting?
It was Erik's term. I'm not sure what he meant by it. But I do
apologize for not putting the term in quotation marks.
In my opinion, if (and that's a big if) this vote
number is caused by
people making what they consider to be strategically the best choice,
then having few votes per ballot means that the voters apparently
trust each other quite well. It means voters find it more likely that
there's a close call between their favorites and the ones they like
well, but not the best than one between people they like well and
those they like not so well. Alternatively speaking, voters (IF their
vote was strategic) trusted that their votes would not be needed to
keep the bad candidates out of the board, and instead used them to try
to get the best ones in rather than the good ones.
It's hard to generalize about the thought process that people wen
through when they were voting. Your last point seems to be the closest
to reality though. If I find only three candidates that meet my
personal criteria, why should I vote for more? Any votes cast for a
fourth candidate could endanger one of my favorites. Given the
closeness between our 3rd and 6th places that segment could have been
very different in a first-past-the-post system.
Ec