Near Clone Sets

[Michael McPhail]

Please unsubscribe me from this list.  Thank you

----Original Message Follows----
Date: Tue, 9 Jun 1998 03:20:27 -0700 (PDT)
From: Mike Ositoff <ntk at netcom.com>
Subject: Near Clone Sets
To: election-methods-list at eskimo.com
Reply-To: election-methods-list at eskimo.com

It's just occurred to me that, though true clone sets will be
quite rare in public political elections--all it takes is 1
voter who differently rates 2 of the set-members with respect
to some other candidate--there could still often be sets of
candidates or alternatives which voters _tend to_ rank in
adjacent rank-positions, rating them as a package, with respect
to alternatives outside the set.

If a large enough percentage of the voters treat a set in
that way, then the clone-set fratricide-proofness of Tideman's
& Schultze's methods could have practical importance.

As I said, it's a question of how much rule-complexity you're
willing to accept for how much refinement, & what the voters
will accept. Though I don't deny the importance of that fratricide-
resistance, it's also true that, the smaller a subset of the
voters we're considering, the more we can expect them to have
their act together with respect to eachother; the worst problem
is the big, gross LO2E problem; these other improvements are
like the fine sanding or the varnish.

Another minor correction: When I said that I completely stand
behind Smith//Condorcet(EM), I should add that I also stand
behind plain Condorcet(EM). As Steve & I discussed here before,
plain Condorcet can be defended against the criticisms & bad-examples
that will be used against it, but the economic disparaity between
proponents & opponents might make it unfeasible to actually answer
those criticisms in public debate, since airtime costs money.
Ideally, but not as a necessity, I like the use of the Smith
set, where simplicity of definition isn't an issue.

This will count for my Tuesday letter. This list is so much quiter
than it was before, that I hesitate to disturb the quite too much,
by writing more than 1 letter in any 1 particular day.

p.s. The archives only go up to around mid March or so. Could someone,
however briefly, summarize for me what the main discussion topics have
been since then, & what, if any, unresolved issues remain from that
recent period?

Mike Ossipoff




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