[EM] Complete voting, part 2.

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

My reply to this message didn't seem to post, and so I'm replying
again:


> >It isn't about sincerity at all. I thought we agreed that
> >completeness isn't a requirement for sincerity.
>
>Yes, but I think that the criteria is meaningless if you invent an 
>arbitrary
>concept (complete voting) in order to define it.

How do you define an "arbitrary concept"? I can't say what should
be meaningful or meaningless to you, but if you're going to say
that a criterion is meaningless, then you should tell why you
don't understand its meaning. Or why you don't consider it
so unimportant as to be meaningless.

Here's what GSFC means (wording loosened some for clarity):

If no one falsifies a preference then if a majority of all the voters,
prefer a certain member of the sincere Smith set to candidate
B, who isn't a member of the sincere Smith set, then, merely by
voting completely, they should be able to cause B to not win.

[end of definition]

Now, that may be meaningless to you, but there are millions of
voters for whom it isn't meaningless to need to use drastic
strategy in order to defeat someone. Voters who insist on voting
against someone, rather than voting _for_ anyone, and who are
willing to abandon their favorite every 4 years, in order to
make their last choice lose.

Most people who want a better voting system would like voters
to be able to vote without strategy, without the "lesser-of-2-evils"
problem forcing them to drastically strategize, or to strategize
at all. SFC & GSFC are about the conditions under which that
guarantee can be made, for complying methods.

Again, in exactly what sense do you think some unspecified
criterion (or criteria) of mine is/are meaningless? Explain
why you believe that.

I suggest that you not make claims that you can't justify, or
even state explicitly.

>It is a much better
>criteria (better to meet) if it is based on an intuitive and applicable
>definiton of sincerity.

Wrong. Sincerity, when it doesn't include completeness, isn't
needed by my criteria. But how is it more intuitive & applicable
to talk about not voting a false preference than to talk about
not leaving a sincere preference unvoted under specified conditions?

>
> >Of course a point system can be similar to a pairwise-count
> >system, in the sense that it can allow you to vote all of your
> >sincere preferences, and so I don't know if some point systems can
> >meet CC by my definition. It's something to check, of course.
> >If they can, and you say that's a fault of my definition, then
> >I'd reply by asking if you prefer the usual CC definitions by
> >which all methods fail, or Plurality passes.
>
>My definition of sincerity was part of the CC definiton that I posted.  It
>uses both an intuitive definition of sincerity and a CC that plurality (for
>example) does not pass.  It would seem that our CCs would pass and fail the
>same methods, but I am just questioning your approach to the issue of
>creating meaningfull criteria.

Fine, but question it in a clearly & explicitly expressed way,
and try not to make stronger statements than you can support.

>If you didn't read my CC, I can post it
>again

I read it, but post it again.

>, but the gist was that a method passes it where, for every set of
>sincere preferences with a sincere Condorcet winner, there is a set of
>ballots that are all sincere and that result in the election of the
>Condorcet winner.

You seem to be saying that all that's necessary is that
the voters, as a whole, have a way of electing the sincere CW
while voting sincerely.

It sounds as if Approval passes your CC. Say everyone who doesn't
rate the CW last votes for him & for everyone whom they like more,
and not for anyone whom they like less.

That's a sincere set of ballots, in which everyone who prefers the
CW to B votes for the CW & not for B. For each B, there are
more people who prefer the CW to B than vice-versa. Therefore,
for each B, the CW gets more votes than B does.

Unless there's some error there, it seems as if Approval meets
your CC.

Mike Ossipoff




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