[EM] James, SFC

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

James--

You said:

	Basically, SFC and GSFC say that you shouldn't be able to pull off a
successful burying strategy just by truncating your ballot, or insincerely
ranking two candidates as being equal

I reply:

No, that isn't what SFC and GSFC say. They apply to all methods, not just 
rank methods, and not just to truncation strategy or any offensive strategy. 
For instance, Pluralitly and IRV fail SFC, though not through any offensive 
strategy of any kind.

You're telling me what SFC and GSFC say. I suggest that since I wrote them, 
it's for me to say what they say. For instance, SFC says that if no one 
falisifes a preference, and if a majority prefer the CW to Y, and vote 
sincerely, then Y shouldn't win.

SFC says that, not what you claim that it says.

You continue:

-- instead, if you want to bury
someone, you have to actually reverse at least one preference ordering. I
recognize the usefulness of these criteria, and I consider them to be a
valid point in favor of winning votes against margins, but I don't think
that their importance should be overstated. That is, they don't mean that
strategizing voters will have less of an ability to bury a candidate, they
just means that they need to use reversal rather than truncation to do so.
I submit that if voters are determined to strategize, the need to use
order-reversal won't be much of a barrier.

I replly:

There's a big difference between a problem that can happen if signifilcant 
numbers of voters attempt offensive order-reversal, and one that happens 
automatically, or by mere truncation. Offensive order-reversal on a scale 
sufficient to affect the outcome isn't likely. When SFC says "if noone 
falsifies a preference", that's a convenient way to say it,but obviously the 
same thing is true if preference-falsification isn't done by a group large 
enough to change the outcome.

I always say that under certain plausible conditions, it won't be necessary 
to do other than rank sincerely.You object that that isn't true under all 
conditions. But such a nonprobabilistic method is impossible. You're asking 
too much. But, under the plausible conditions under which such a guarantee 
can be made, wv makes it, because wv meets SFC.

Mike Ossipoff

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