[EM] Kevin criteria reply

Michael Ossipoff mikeo2106 at msn.com
Tue Feb 20 09:26:49 PST 2007


To comment on the last part first:

Kevin says:

(Although, incidentally, Mike's criticism that my scheme can't be used to 
show that Approval and Range fail SFC is quite strange. SFC is defined on 
sincere preferences. If Mike means "what I use in place of SFC"…

I reply:

Yes, I thought I’d made it clear that I was asking how, in _your_ system of 
criteria, you’d show that Approval and other RV versions pass or fail 
SFC--your criteria system’s way of saying SFC. But if you prefer, just show 
that Approval and some other RV version pass or fail Condorcet’s Criterion, 
as your criteria system expresses CC.

And, as I said, you never demonstrated that. I said that years ago, and the 
statement remains true now. Your criteria system remains a sketch only, as 
long as you can’t precisely define it, and then use it to demonstrate 
compliance or noncompliance.

Your criteria system has a privileged balloting system. My criteria make no 
mention of any balloting system.

By the way, for the kind of approach that you’re doing, it might be better 
for  the privileged balloting system to be ratings instead of rankings. 
Ratings contain rank information, but ranks don’t contain rating 
information. Ratings are more general than rankings are. Therefore, making 
them the privileged balloting system isn’t quite as unjustifiable. Not 
quite. But your criteria system would still be about a balloting system, 
something that my criteria make no mention of.

And then there’s the fact that your system is based on a false assumption, 
even though its falsity is acknowledged, and even though the results might 
come out right in the end. “Let’s pretend that Plurality has rank (or 
rating) ballots”? What a thing to start a criterion with. What great lengths 
some people will go to, to make Plurality fail Condorcet’s Criterion without 
mentioning preference.

These things make your criteria system thoroughly inelegant--an arbitrarily 
grafted mess.

Kevin continues:

then I believe it's at least true that there is no way to interpret Approval 
or Range such that they satisfy the criterion under my scheme.)

I reply:

Forgive me, but I didn’t ask you to show that Approval or RV satisfy the 
criterion. I asked you to show that they meet or fail it. Either will do. 
More recently I asked that about SFC. But if you don’t want to deal with SFC 
(though you do claim that you have a votes-only wording for it), then do so 
for Condorcet’s Criterion. I believe that that was probably my initial 
request, a few years ago.

Mike Ossipoff





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