[EM] Approval Vote: The unfairness of being dead

[Markus Schulze]

Dear Craig,

you wrote (31 May 2000):
> I just sent a message to my list commenting on Blake Cretney's webpage
> on rules. He defined the Majority Criteria as saying a candidate
> should get above 50%. That is false, and this example confirms that:
>
> Election system V =
>
>      1: A
>
> Number of winners = 0
>
>
> People now have strong mathematical justification for ignore
> messages from Mr Schulze.

You'll have to rephrase this, because I have absolutely no idea what
you mean.

The Majority Criterion says that if more than half of the voters
strictly prefer candidate A to every other candidate then candidate
A must be elected. Where does your example show any problems of the
Majority Criterion?

Also I don't understand your phrase: "People now have strong mathematical
justification for ignore messages from Mr Schulze." What do my messages
have to do with Blake Cretney's webpage?

******

You wrote (31 May 2000):
> Mr Shulze : opposed to bad reasoning or not?. [Probably not.] Still,
>             I may have written off Schulze theory. A side effect
>             of getting an idea of Norm Petry written off. It is
>             a significant event because it took 23 papers to get
>             Condorcet, and that beats the 21 it took to write STV/AV
>             off forever. I guess that means the Condorcet ideas
>             might be a bit better than the Alternative Vote.
>             However the details would need to be checked out:
>    http://www.egroups.com/message/politicians-and-polytopes/23?&start=1
>             No need to reply, Markus. I know you no longer reply to my
>             personal e-mail [due to the detail and length of the
>             criticism]

You'll have to rephrase this, because I have absolutely no idea what
you mean.

By the way, I did reply to your personal mails. Didn't I?

******

You wrote (31 May 2000):
> Mr Shulze wrote that having a method based on axioms is a test that
> passes any method.

I wrote that for almost every election method it is possible to
define seemingly reasonable criteria such that this election method
is the unique election method that meets these criteria.

In a private mail, you asked me which criteria could be used to
make Alternative Voting "axiom based." And I answered that the
Majority Criterion, the Positive Involvement Criterion, and the
Independence from Clones Criterion exclude almost every other
election method.

In a reply, you wrote that "the majority criterion is not a desirable
rule." You wrote that the Positive Involvement Criterion is a "misplaced
idea." And you wrote that the Independence from Clones Criterion has no
"appearance of importance" and that it is "a rule I can ignore."

In so far as your unique argument to reject these criteria was that
you don't like them and in so far as you didn't give any mathematical
reasoning, there was no basis for me to reply to you.

******

You wrote (31 May 2000):
> Mr Shulze doesn't seem to comment against the use of invalid
> reasoning. I suppose this is irrelvant.

I don't comment on every mail. I have other things to do.

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