"falsification won't change outcome"

[Mike Ossipoff]

Hugh R. Tobin writes:
> 
> Mike Ossipoff wrote:
> > 
> > In one posting, Tobin used my statement that falsification won't
> > happen on a scale sufficient to change the election result
> > to mean something other than what I'd meant by the statement:
> > 
> > I meant literally that falsification won't be widespread enough
> > to change an election result. But Tobin was saying, in 1 letter,
> > that my statement about that confirms his claim that the
> > order-reversing Dole voters will never be able to make Clinton
> > more beaten than Dole.
> > 
> 
> I did not claim that, nor did I make many of the other assumptions or 
> assertions attributed to me in commentary on earlier postings.  Indeed, 

I merely meant that you used my statement to mean something other
than what I'd meant by it.


> I have argued that the possibility of successful order-reversal by a 
> plurality and the absence of a convincing defense to that strategy is a 
> non-trivial issue for Condorcet, in part because polling data might 

Certainly it would be, which is why it's a good thing that
Condorcet has a convincing defense.

> enable the plurality voters to predict a high probability of success.  

Polling information, helped by some very bad judgement on the
part of the order-reversers.

> But voters are always dealing with uncertainty.  Nobody can be sure that 
> an order-reversal strategy will or will not succeed, or that a natural 
> circular tie will or will not be created.  My point was simply that

Maybe you're wanting to get rid of uncertainty to a greater degree
than is possible in a simple 1-balloting method. By the way, in
a 3-candidate election, it _can_ be safely said that order-reversal
will reliably backfire. In a bigger election it can work if
the order-reversers have better polling data than their
intended victims, something that is unlikely. Success for
order-reversal also requires that somehow the intended victims
never hear about it in advance. Admittedly, in a more-than-3
candidate election, order-reversal could succeed if, somehow
the victims trusted the perpetrators enough to rank their 
candidate, and if they never heard of the order-reversal
plans. But that's asking a lot. It assumes, as I told you
long ago, that one group of voters has polling data &
knows what's going on, & understands strategy, and that
another group are gullible suckers.


> faced 
> with this uncertainty, even if it seemed highly likely that the Dole 
> voters would make Clinton "more beaten" than Dole, a Clinton voter who 
> was indifferent as to whether Dole or Nader would be elected if Clinton 
> were not, would want his equal ranking of those two candidates counted
> as 
> one-half vote for and against each, not as zero each way.  This is 
> because there would be some chance that the half-votes of that voter and 
> other like-minded voters would make Clinton least-beaten in case of a 
> circular tie. (I have discussed elsewhere the strategic options to which
> the Clinton voter should resort if not permitted half-votes.) 

You're still ignoring the fact that the Clinton voters, by publicizing
that they'll not rank any Republicans, can deter Republican
order-reversal. By carrying out that threat, they ensure that
it will remain credible in future elections. You're ignoring the
fact that the Clinton voters can ensure election of the
Condorcet winner Clinton by deterring order-reversal.

> 
> > No, I said that the order-reversal won't affect the election
> > at all, not that it merely won't make Clinton more beaten
> > than Dole.
> >
> 
> In my example, the order-reversal by a minority of the Dole voters, or 
> their true preference for Nader over Dole, was enough to create a 
> circular tie but not enough to change the election result if the 
> half-votes were counted for the Clinton voters (who chose no second 
> preference).  I think it illustrates that the basic thrust of Ossipoff's
> statement would be correct in a slightly greater range of possible 
> distributions of votes, if the half-votes for equal rankings were 
> counted under the rule I proposed. 

You're still talking about Clinton's chances of winning assuming
that order-reversal does take place, perpetrated by the Dole
voters. That's your error. Because it can be prevented from taking
place, and that can be done with complete certainty in a
3-candidate election if, as I said, the Dole voters have any
idea what's going on. I've talked at great length about the
game-of-chicken, a game between Dole & Clinton voters, in which
the Clinton voters have the advantage, even with more than
3 candidates. But with only 3 candidates, the order-reversal
would be so obviously a losing strategy that it certainly
woldn't be attempted unless the Dole voters could be sure
that the Clinton voters are complete suckers, completely]
ignorant of the strategy situation.


> 
> > If any kind of defense against the order-reversal is needed,
> > including the falsification strategy that Tobin suggests
> > for the Clinton voters, that means that the order-reversal
> > has happend on a scale sufficient to change the election
> > result, which is what I say won't happen.
> > 
> 
> I did not suggest any "falsification" strategy for the Clinton voters. I 
> give Mr. Ossipoff full credit for educating us all about the potential 
> for order-reversal strategy and for proposing the truncation deterrent 

Because I don't consider order-reversal a problem in a real-world
public election, I wouldn't have brought it up unless forced to
by others in the discussion, when they seek out the only
situation (order-reversal) where it's even possible to talk
about a possible problem with Condorcet's method.

> (which is a falsification strategy in his terminology, in which
> truncation implies hiding a true preference, though I did not use
> "truncation" in that sense). 

Nope, not at all--not expressing all of your preferences is
not the same as falsifying them. Falsification means voting
false preferences, prefernces that are not really yours.

Not saying something that's true isn't lying. Truncation isn't
falsification. 

> 
> > If, on the other hand, it's necessary to use strategy against
> > the order-reversal, because it's widespread enough to change
> > the election result (by making Clinton be beaten), then it
> > very much runs the risk of backfiring for the Dole voters
> > and electing Nader, if the Clinton voters know what they're
> > doing.
> >
> The Dole voters' strategy is certainly risky if they prefer Clinton 
> significantly to Nader, which is why it may be difficult to get enough
> of 
> them to participate, though there may be a minority who regard Clinton
> as 
> almost as bad, and therefore are willing to take the chance (if they 
> think it is the only way that Dole might win).  The Dole voters even run 
> a risk of electing Nader outright, as false Condorcet winner, if they 
> have miscalculated.
> The question, I think, is not whether the Clinton voters know what they 
> are doing but what their preferences are.  It is possible that the mere 
> fact that Dole supporters' attempt to create a circular tie in order to 
> win the election would cause Clinton supporters to prefer a Nader 
> election to a Dole victory when previously this would not have been
> true. 
>  But this is not necessarily the case, and one cannot assume they would 
> falsify their preferences at the polls, with no benefit (and possible

Again, truncation isn't falsification of preferences. No false
preferences are being voted by voters who are merely not voting
some of their real preferences.

> harm) to their own candidate, just on the principle that voters who
> attempt to manipulate the Condorcet system must be punished. 


Look, you're continuing to repeat the same error that I brought
to your attention a long time ago. You're taking the order-reversal
as a given, and saying that it gives the intended victims a
fait-acompli to deal with. As I've so carefully & repeatedly
explained to you, your 1-sided, discriminatory, double-standard
approach to order-reversal ignores the fact that the situation
we're talking about is a game-of-chicken in which _both_ players
have a choice to make. You keep saying that the Dole voters
have an accomplished deed that they've done, and that the
Clinton voters have a dilemma based on that accomplished deed.

So I repeat, yet again, that it's a 2-way game, that game of
chicken. The Dole voters too have a decision that they need
to make, based on what the Clinton voters are probably doing.

In that _mutual_ game of chicken, the Dole voters have the
advanatage, because they're in the middle. They won't suffer
as much from a Nader victory as would the Dole voters, and
this makes their defensive truncation retaliatory threat very
credible--much more credible than the Dole's voters to hurt
themselves more than the Clinton voters.

Aside from that, there's the aspect of ethical principle:
Everyone knows that the Dole voters are the ones who'd be
cheating, to defat a Condorcet winner. I've also carefully
explained to you that a defender is in a much more credible
position than an attacker. I gave the example of how the
cat defending its own territory is nearly always the winner
of standoffs with cats attempting to impose on that territory.

You know, it really shouldn't be necessary to keep repeating
the same reply, when the statement replied to is repeated without
an attempt to answer the reply.

>  
> > For that reason, since making Clinton more beaten than Dole
> > is an essential part of the Dole voters' falsification strategy,
> > something without which it wouldn't be a good idea to falsify,
> > then the Clinton voters are making a mistake if they assume that
> > the Dole falsification, while widespread enough to change
> > the election result, isn't going to succeed in making Clinton
> > more beaten than Dole. It has to, or it shouldn't be done in
> > the first place.
> > 
> 
> I agree that one should not try something that is not going to work.
> This 
> is true not only of the order-reversal strategy, but also of the 

So if the Dole voters are attempting order-reversal, we can
assume that they think they can make Nader beat Clinton. And
if they think that, from polling information available to all,
then there's reason to assume it's likely to be so.


> candidacy itself!  Why run if you aren't going to get enough votes?  Why 
> organize strategic voting if you can't get enough supporters to go
> along?
> In hindsight many electoral gambits look foolish (no offense to Steve 
> Forbes).  The risks that order-reversal strategy would fall short and 
> leave Clinton as Condorcet winner, or as least-beaten in a circular 
> tie, are more tolerable than the risks discussed above, because Clinton 

No, that isn't the risk that I was referring to, for order-reversal.
The risk is the risk of electing Nader. To take that risk, there'd
have to be the potential for payoff, and that potential, even
ideally, could only exist if the Dole voters have the capability
of making Clinton more beaten than Dole.


> probably would win if no order-reversal were tried.  So if Dole has set 
> the strategy in motion I would not assume he would call it off at the 
> last minute just because he is not sure that enough of his voters will
> go 
> along with it to make Clinton more-beaten.

Pointless to do so unless you expect to make Clinton more
beaten. No payoff to justify the risk.

> 
> My point, again, was that the circumstance in which the Dole strategy 
> falls short of making Clinton more beaten by Nader than is Dole by 
> Clinton is the only case in which the Clinton voter who sincerely 
> declined to rank Dole and Nader could be made better or worse off by the 
> method of counting equal rankings for the tiebreak.  In that case, the 

Not at all. If the Dole voters succeeded in making Clinton
more beaten than Dole, then your false contrary half votes on
the part of the Clinton voters are helping the Dole voters
succeed in stealing the election. That makes them worse off,
by not having deterred the stealing. You said the Clinton voters
don't have a preference between Dole & Nader. Then they have
no problem with Nader winning instead of Dole. In practice,
the MIddle voters will have less preference beteween the extremes
than one extreme will have between Middle & the other extreme.

> half-vote against Nader could win the election for Clinton.  Therefore, 
> if one accepts that a voter should be allowed to express equal dislike
> of candidates without forfeiting one of his alloted "votes against" in
> the case of a circular tie -- i.e., that half-votes should at least be
> an option -- then in order to make a case for even allowing the Clinton
> voter an option to have his equal rankings at the bottom of his ballot
> count zero each way, one must establish the value of strategic
> truncation (i.e., falsely ranking candidates equally when one really
> prefers one over the other), and explain why the truncating voter would
> not want half-votes counted.

Whoa. In order to _allow_ the Clinton voter to not have his ballot
falsified, adding at least 1 preference that he didn't vote, 
we should have to demonstrate something to justify letting
the voter not have his ballot falsified against his will??

And again, truncation, defensive or otherwise, isn't falsly
doing anything. Not making a true statement isn't the same
as making a false statement.

And I've told you the use of defensive truncation--especially
in a 3-candidate race, it prevents order-reversal. What more
justification would you like?

> 
> -- Hugh Tobin
> 
> > Mike
> > 
> > --
> .-
> 


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