[EM] New Voting mailing list: Politicians and Polytopes

[Craig Carey]

I am writing to (a) get the topic in the subject field, for
  browsers o www.egroups.com.
Also, (b), they are not keeping up to date this list's archive,
  which is at (and around):

  http://www.egroups.com/messages/election-methods-list/5293


I was just writing to Egroups to perk them up to opposing
  Saudi Arabian official censoring of http://www.egroups.com/.

I note here that some of Mr Ossipoff's writings could be
  worse than unclear.



--------------------------------------------------------
At 03:12 01.04.00 +0000, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote:
 >EM list--
 >
...
 >B  Approval  Plurality  IRV  Borda
 >.4  1.6       1.6        4/3   3
 >.6  1.6       1.4        4/3   3
 >.25 1.75      1.75       4/3   3
 >.75 1.75      1.25       4/3   3
 >.1  1.9       1.9        4/3   3
 >.9  1.9       1.1        4/3   3
 >
 >***
 >
 >Voting sincerely in Approval means voting for all the above-mean
 >candidates. Just as voting for one's favorite in Plurality
 >with 0-info is the utility-expectation maximizing strategy,
 >but is also sincere, that's also true of Approval's above-mean
 >strategy.
 >
 >A sincere voter always does better with Approval than with
 >IRV. He usually does better with Plurality than with IRV.
 >He does better with Plurality than with IRV as long as B is
 >less than 2/3. In other words, he does better with Plurality than
 >with IRV twice as often as not.
 >
 >The formula for the table entry with Plurality is 2-B. With
 >Approval it's 2-min(B, 1-B).
...
 >Borda does especially well, but, with its uniquely abominable
...
--------------------------------------------------------

I quote the above because it has almost obviously false in a
  spot: the comments about sincerity. Sincerity is not found by
  using some quite linear idea.

One paragraph is about something inside Approval, and then the
  conclusion is comparative and it cant be made unless the test
  can exist outside of Approval. This has been seen before in
  more than one message. No one in this list would expect Mr
  Ossipoff to need to criticize methods other than Approval using
  ideas that barely have plausibility when thought of as applying
  to methods quite unlike Approval. It seems like a child's
  religious belief to move outside of the confines of the earlier
  ideas, but some distortion would be expected anyway since the
  task of showing the Approval Voting method better than IRV, could
  be difficult, although so much is not held in common.

I still have a doubt about uses of the word probability. Probably
  the authors that wrote on utility theory wrote on little of
  importance. Mr Schulze could tell us of the light and merit of
  modern publications on voting theory, e.g. as offset against a
  simple desire to get the single candidate whose name is there on
  the paper, into government.

While Mathematicians can work by the candlelight, it is quite
  different when numerical data on probabilities is estimated.
  Mr Ossipoff wrote to me in the last day (after I had been
  writing) and said 'no data' for probability distributions. Apart
  from that, how many readers had understood that the entire
  theory of utility was based upon empirical data?. Rational
  numbers can't be used any more, and the previous errors will
  be correct it can be imagined (why not since most readers would
  do that anyway if they made mistakes all of their own). I haven't
  read all of the message I got, so far.

This list has very few subscribers, hasn't it Rob!. I didn't know
  until I saw that 2 joined mine apart from myself. But that is
  another story.

I apologize for the clear wordiness of this. There is just not
  enough defining, that allows others to take ideas away with them,
  as if given, or something had been imparted.