[EM] CVD wants Alt.V to be fairer but it isn't: misleading website

[Craig Carey]

Here is Mr Schulze clarifying some thinking from HOTMAIL.COM


------------------------------------------------------------------------
At 2000\10\02 13:35 +0100 Monday, Markus Schulze wrote:
    Date: Mon, 02 Oct 2000 13:35:32 +0100
    From: Markus Schulze <****@sol.physik.tu-berlin.de>
    To: election-methods-****@eskimo.com
    Subject: Re: [EM] CVD wants Alt.V to be fairer but it isn't: misleading website

 >Dear Mike,
...
 >You ["MIKE OSSIPOFF" <nkklrp at hotmail.com] wrote (2 Oct 2000):
 >> Can I call that IFCC? Doesn't IFCC say that if we delete from the
 >> ballots 1 or more candidates from a clone set, and recount the ballots,
 >> that shouldn't change the matter of whether or not the winner comes
 >> from that clone set?
 >>
 >> That doesn't seem very useful. If we turn it around and add clones,
...
 >> For instance, maybe they always vote to maximize their utility
 >> expectation (we then have to specify utilities in our examples),
...
 >> So say a method meets IFCC. Would it meet a more realistic version?
 >> Maybe not, and so I suggest that meeting IFCC doesn't mean a whole lot.
 >
 >I don't believe that you don't consider independence from clones to be
 >important. Otherwise you would concentrate only on PC and you wouldn't
 >promote three methods in your http://electionmethods.org website.
 >
 >PC is the best Condorcet method when one concentrates only on
 >strategical voting and ignores strategical nomination. PC meets
 >Saari's positive involvement criterion and Fishburn's no-show
 >criterion. PC guarantees that a dichotomous voter cannot be
 >punished for showing up and voting sincerely.
 >
 >PC isn't vulnerable to what Steve calls "indirect strategies."
 >That means: If PC is used then it isn't possible to change the
 >winner from candidate A to candidate B by ranking two different
 >candidates C and D insincerely to each other.
 >
 >Therefore when you don't consider independence from clones to
 >be important then why do you promote more methods than just PC?
------------------------------------------------------------------------

The essential Markus of the EM list: clarifying Mr Ossipoff's thoughts.

That 2000 AD message replied to this message of Mr Ossipoff:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
At 00\10\02 03:31 +0000 Monday, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote:
...
 >Marcus continues:
 >
 >I consider the independence from clones criterion to be more
 >important than the participation criterion. Therefore I prefer
 >IRV to FPP.
 >
 >I reply:
 >
 >Can I call that IFCC? Doesn't IFCC say that if we delete from the
...
------------------------------------------------------------------------

It is completely from my own theories which has First Past the Post
(and SNTV, with both receiving truly preferential papers) get a
perfect pass under all tests that are used except for the test of
proportionality which does not allow ignoring of the 2nd and
subsequent preferences.

It seems novel and uniquely remarkable and in my view, opposed to all
that the Alternative Vote stands for (at least once extrapolated out
to STV),
to have some test called "independence of clones" be both:
  * worth using, and
  * yet FPTP.

In the axiomatic theory of preferential voting that I have that leads
to methods that don't get fried in court as if a CVD CEO, yet otherwise
are as similar as possible, nothing but the rule of proportionality
fails First Past the Post.

Additionally and I guess Mr Schulze knows it, the solid coalitions
does not just seem to pass the Alternative, but it is so fantastically
weak (as using Dummett's wording) that is a perfectly worthless rule
that passes too many methods. Maybe it would fail the methods at this
list but they seem to be get eliminated in other ways (e.g. the
so called Approval method).

I clarified the axioms of my IFPP theory in the last message I sent
to my main mailing list:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/politicians-and-polytopes
The single-transferable-vote mailing list is people that can't
talk the universal language algebra or of precision.

If the PC method is, best then golly to gosh, maybe the method called
"IRV" (by Time magazine, a publisher of magazines with no known
expertise in the design of pure preferential voting methods), can't be
the best since differing from the PC method.

What Markus seems to have had in October 2000 was (despite the
conclusion that IRV was best), inherently extremely disagreeable to
the followers of IRV-izm who in their sharper moments would be
expecting that IFPP axioms would divert the river through their
stables and clean it ought. I don't yet know what "independence from
irrelevant clones" (and the 3-4 words have to be in that order) and it
could just the usual: undefined, far too weak to bother with and in
the shadow of some better rule, or just rejectible. It goes without
saying that it is badly defined (though I have yet to find out if
it the lack of definition is substantially unfixable under the usual
test for Rob Lanphier's thinkers: 20 top mathematician are allowed
four weeks and instructed to fill in the missing sentences in a free
way but without controversy.

I see that my message that started the topic seems to have remained
good despite the passage of time, so I quote it below.

As far as I can tell, taking the search back to October 2000, seems
to not take the search far enough back if there is to be success at
getting the term "independence from irrelevant clones" defined (where
the word "irrelevant" may be omitted.

If the whatever-clones rules rejects First Past the Post (something
that in IFPP theory as stated, only proportionality will do
[i.e. that rule that ignores the order of preferences], then it must
be that Mr Schulze is partly rejecting the idea the summing be right
[i.e. rejecting the idea that 3 preferences are less than four and
thus 4 ought win unless the strict rules attentive more to the
interior periphery are overruling with some finding about the need
to respect the ordering of the papers].

In the above text, First Past the Post is a preferential method that
received STV-style papers and it definitely  does not receive
checkbox papers (since the rules are undefined for those types of
papers, and a preprocessing scheme to patch around that is not
defined, so the Approval Method is fully excluded from the
considerations of what is best, and put into a class of its own
unless rejected or ignored, etc.).

I am not sure what Mr Schulze would say, but the essential hostility
towards STV and the Alternative Vote that part of the reasoning
leading to the conclusion that IRV is best, is there in full measure
and just as surely as the sea-floor is of a distance x beneath the
sea-surface.


===================================================


 >From:  Markus Schulze <markus.schulze at a...>
 >Date:  Tue Feb 5, 2002  10:36 am
 >Subject:  Re: [EM] Consensus?: IRV vs. Primary w/Runoff
 >Dear Forest,
 >
 >you wrote (4 Feb 2002):
 >> Markus wrote (4 Feb 2002):
 >> > In so far as IRV meets majority for solid coalitions and independence
 >> > from clones, IRV can hardly be called "erratic" compared to primary
 >> > with runoff.

! -- it is almost as if "solid coalitions" was an idea even worth
memorizing. I thought it was too weak to make it a rule that was worth
memorizing.

A better rule is proportionality (it is in the style of STV/IRV) but
unlike the clones rule, it does not (as was alleged) reject "FPP"
(First Past the Post).

 >>
 >> Evidently the "erratic" that I have described is different from the
 >> "erratic" that is measured in terms of solid coalitions and independence
 >> from clones. The "erratic" that I described has more to do with the
 >> complexity of strategy and the sensitivity or strategy to variations
 >> in information.
 >
 >Of course, then you have to explain why it is bad for an election method
 >to be "erratic".

Watch out Mr Schulze: algebra is used to answer questions like that and
the question seems to be posed in a way that is too general (or else it
is after nothing), given how the algebra would be stuck with the number
of candidates not exceeding four. It is like painting a wall: a really
think brush can slop on allegations that the Alternative Vote is erratic
and semi-random. Furthermore I seem to have got the ideas of rules that
define erraticness somewhat defined too. Remember that as a member of
the politicians-and-polytopes mailing list, you have been receiving my
statements on what differential "0<=power<=1" rules can, should, or will
be.

I will answer for the person questioned and say refer to this message:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
At 1999\09\22 11:17 +0100 Wednesday, Wiseman, Julian wrote:

    From: "Wiseman, Julian" <julian.wiseman at csfb.com>
    To: "'election-methods-list at eskimo.com'"
    	 <election-methods-list at eskimo.com>
    Subject: RE: [EM] Proportional preferential voting
    Date: Wed, 22 Sep 1999 11:17:07 +0100

 >See the "Note of Reservation" by Lord Alexander of Weedon QC in the Report
 >Of The Independent Commission on the Voting System,
 >(http://www.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm40/4090/chap-9.htm#c9-a).
 >His comments are about 'small-STV', called AV, but the point is equally
 >applicable.
 >
 >Indeed, Lord Weedon almost but not quites manages to conclude that
 >non-monotonic systems have embedded randomness -- something not widely
 >acknowledged.
 >
 >-----------------------------------------------
 >Julian D. A. Wiseman, http://www.jdawiseman.com
 >
 >
 >
 >> -----Original Message-----
 >> From:	Markus Schulze [SMTP:schulze at sol.physik.tu-berlin.de]
 >> Sent:	Wednesday, September 22, 1999 10:01 AM
 >> To:	election-methods-list at eskimo.com
 >> Subject:	Re: [EM] Proportional preferential voting
 >>
 >> Dear Craig,
 >>
 >> I haven't yet understood the intention of your mails.
 >> To help me understand your thoughts, I want to ask you
 >> to give an explicit[...] example where -to your opinion-
 >> a plain vanilla STV method leads to a problematic
 >> or unjustifiable result. And I want to ask you to
 >> explain why this result is problematic or unjustifiable
 >> to your opinion.
 >>
 >> Markus Schulze
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

I got a few major examples at the single-transferable-vote mailing list
of 2 winner 4 candidate STV being not-monotonic (October 2002).

Research into the shock shortcomings of STV is advanced which needs
some of the world greatest numerical analysts before it can be adequately
promoted to a position where the research into plain/Meeks STV bugs can
be an ongoing serious research topic. In short a method that no country
would use.

By the way, Mr Schulze can tell me and all,
   what constraints on tilt angles (deviation from FPTP) are imposed by
   power<=1 but not by 0<=power ?. The two rules could overlap.
The answer would clarify 'rough ways of thinking' on what the 'power
limiting plus sincerity requiring' power<=1 rule means.

Don't forget to match it up with the clones rule. Does "clones rule" that
you like, parcel a prohibition on insincerity (can only make A win by
voting for (B) and can't make A win by voting for A), in with a
generalised mukltiwinner one man one vote idea. It is certainly far
from obvious since the sincerity rule that I would have be under "power<=1"
is falling under the "0<=power" generalised rule. Once the monotonicity
style requirements are deleted, what exactly remains for you to describe
when defining if possible the arguments that show the clones rule,
and whatever else, to be preferable, all the way to the green-slime
(sub-cockroach) conclusion that IRV is good enough to use in a real
election of mayors or polticians [the last filled in by guessing].

Is research progressing fast enough at this mailing list ?.



G. A. Craig Carey
Voting for the masses: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/single-transferable-vote


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