[EM] Participation & SARC

[Markus Schulze]

Dear Mike,

you wrote (6 May 2000):
> Sure that makes sense, as a pre-emptive defense against proposals
> that will probably never be made. Still, academically, of course
> it's reasonable to write those generalized criteria. I was merely
> saying that there's little if any practical value to that effort,
> because random methods will never be a serious rival.

Almost every thicker book about voting theory contains a chapter
about probabilistic election methods.

******

You wrote (6 May 2000):
> My point was, then, that there's no need to add to the complexity
> of criteria, or to add extra wording that will puzzle the people
> whom we want to understand the criteria, in order to deal with
> methods that will never be competitive proposals.

The aim of the election methods mailing list is to discuss
election methods in a scientific manner. How election methods
are propagated is discussed in the election reform mailing
list, in the instantrunoff mailing list, in the canada-votes
mailing list and in all the other mailing lists.

Suppose that you are in a public discussion outside the
internet. Suppose that one of your opponents says that all
those problems that you are talking about can be circumvented
simply be using a random tie breaker. What will you answer?
If you answer "I refuse to discuss random election methods."
then you have already lost the discussion. So -even if you
don't like random election methods- you have to know what
to answer when somebody proposes them.

The aim of this mailing list is not to convince anybody of
anything. Actually, for your success of Approval Voting in
California it is completely irrelevant whether you can convince
David in Australia, Norman in Canada or Markus in Germany.
The aim of this mailing list is to exchange information and
to give you the possibility to improve your argumentation
so that you can survive in a discussion outside the internet.

******

You wrote (6 May 2000):
> Good enough. Participation indeed isn't SARC, and
> participation's unrealistic assumption of sincere voting
> detracts greatly from the meaningfulness of the fact that
> point systems pass participation.

I don't understand your comment. Could you -please- explain it?

Do you think that clone criteria are meaningless because it is
unrealistic for large electorates that there is a set of clones?
Do you think that the Pareto criterion is meaningless because
it is unrealistic for large electorates that there is a pair
of candidates such that every voter strictly prefers the one
candidate to the other candidate? Do you think that every
criterion that makes idealist presumptions is meaningless?

******

It seems to me that you are very angry that I use Herve
Moulin's participation criterion and not your SARC.
The main reason why I use Herve Moulin's participation
criterion is the fact that his criterion is well known
in literature.

Markus Schulze
schulze at sol.physik.tu-berlin.de
schulze at math.tu-berlin.de
markusschulze at planet-interkom.de