VA, Margins, & voter wishes

[Mike Ositoff]

On Fri, 2 Oct 1998, Blake Cretney wrote:

> On Thu, 1 Oct 1998 17:51:11    Mike Ositoff wrote:
> >
> >
> >I'm going to back out of my agreement with Blake's stat4ment
> >that VA is out of the rank-count discussion. For 1 thing,
> >the fact that I don't believe that rank-balloting is a
> >practical public proposal doesn't mean don't believe that
> >1 rank method has more merit than another. Some people do
> >advocate rank methods for public use, and I suggest to them
> >that VA is the one that does what they want, if they want
> >what most people want from a rank method. And the merit of
> >methods can be discussed regardless of what some of us
> >believe in proposing publicly. Also, pursuing this discussion
> >helps prove my claim that rank count discussion will always
> >be a hopeless mess.
> >
> So, one of your reasons for advocating VA is to discredit Condorcet
> methods in general.

Correct. As I said earlier, the great value of Don, Blake
& Bart is to show you what you'll be up against if you try
to explain rank-counting to the public. But my other reason
for participating is that if someone does want to propose
rank-balloting, they might as well use a better method.

done (done with this reply, but more subsequently)



> 
> >Also, I'm not the only one here to speak for VA vs Margins.
> 
> ...
> >So you see, Blake, we all agree with the desirabilty of
> >that measure. But the Condorcet Criterion, by itself, isn't
> >enough. That's why I added:
> >
> >If a majority of all the voters indicate that they'd rather
> >have A than B, then if we choose A or B it should be A.
> >
> >Do you disagree with that, Blake? Or other Margins advocates?
> >
> Yes, I disagree.  What your saying is that a pair-wise vote
> where the winning side has a majority of voters must always
> take precedence over a pair-wise vote where this is not the
> case, no matter what the margin of victory is.
> So, when one must be over-ruled, a victory of
> 52 to 48  with 100 voters
> must take precedence over a victory of
> 49 to 4
> despite the fact that for those expressing a preference, the second
> vote seems clearly more decisive.
> 
> Furthermore, if you accept VA, it has the side effects that
> 60 to 40
> must take precedence over
> 59 to 3
> And
> 48 to 47
> must take precedence over
> 47 to 2
> These results seem contrary to our usual idea of what constitutes a
> decisive vote, and are not required by GMC, but are the result of VA.
> 
> The problem here is the basic belief that a majority of people
> participating in a pair-wise vote is not a real majority, that
> only a majority of participants in the election as a whole is a
> real majority.
> 
> But consider that a majority of those participating in the election, is
> not necessarily a majority of those elligible to vote.  Typically,
> however, we interpret majority rule as a majority of participants.
> So, in a pair-wise vote, I think it is reasonable to think that it is the participants in that pair-wise vote that count.
> 
> 
> 
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