[EM] Blake misread ...) corection. Tideman didn't gain Ombudsman approval

Craig Carey research at ijs.co.nz
Mon Nov 6 10:25:36 PST 2000





My last message to Mr Blake Cretney was a significant mistake based
on an idea I had which was that the case of zero candidates was being
silently restricted by Blake Cretney which is not a proper matter
for me to comment on. I back out of that here. The restriction is in
the text, as this copy of the original shows:

===========================================================

At 17:58 04.11.00 +0100 Saturday, Markus Schulze wrote:
 >Dear Craig,
 >
 >there is a paper by Woodall in which he demonstrates that
 >no preferential single-winner election method can meet the
 >following four properties simultaneously [Douglas R. Woodall,
 >"An impossibility theorem for electoral systems," Discrete
 >Mathematics, vol. 66, p. 209-211, 1987]:
 >
 >1) monotonicity;
 >
 >2) later-no-help and later-no-harm;
 >
 >3) if no second preferences are expressed and candidate A
 >   has a plurality of first preferences, then candidate A
 >   must be elected;
 >
 >4) if more than half of the voters strictly prefer candidate
 >   A and candidate B to every other candidate, then either
 >   candidate A or candidate B must be elected.
 >
 >Which of Woodall's properties would you be prepared to see
 >not satisfied by your preferred system?
 >
 >Markus Schulze
===========================================================




There is a big paragraph and 4 words in it has the word "Woodall".

So I didn't read it.

I have a 1997 paper by the same person and I read a bit of that.
It is a touch slog. E.g. it it has the word "probability" all
throughout it, e.g. ideas like 'probability that C wins a 3
candidate election with papers (a:A, b:B, a:C) is less than or
equal to 1/2. It doesn't correspond to a colouring of a
triangle. I don't know how it is possible to make such a mistake.
How many errors result from that blunder is not so clear. A
search could start around the "mon-sub-plump" definition, although
maybe the definitions is shaky. It might be a matter more for my
new mailing list on/around the fluid STV method, etc.:

    http://www.egroups.com/group/single-transferable-vote

(Definitions/truth before understanding/education).





At 08:38 05.11.00 -0800 Sunday, Blake Cretney wrote:
 >
 >Recall that Markus said:
 >
 >> there is a paper by Woodall in which he demonstrates that
 >> no preferential single-winner election method can meet the
 >> following four properties simultaneously [Douglas R. Woodall,
 >> "An impossibility theorem for electoral systems," Discrete
 >> Mathematics, vol. 66, p. 209-211, 1987]:
 >
 >On Sun, 5 Nov 2000, Craig Carey wrote:
 >>
 >>
 >> At 22:41 04.11.00 -0800 Saturday, Blake Cretney wrote:
 >> > I just don't
 >> > see
 >>  >remarks like
 >>  >
 >>  > > Property 3 ought be rejected too since it wrong for all
 >>  > > elections
 >>  > > with 0 winners.
 >>  >
 >>  >as being worthy of comment.
 >>
 >> If you want to constrain the number of elements in a set then you
 >> have to do it explicitly. Do you try to suggest by the actual words
 >> that you used, that whatever you feel or believe is inherent and
 >> factual in any formula you see?.
 >
 >Markus said that Woodall's paper was for "single-winner" elections.
 >Single winner elections have exactly one winner.

I agree with Mr Cretney's comment, but only for the last message I
wrote. In my opinion, Mr Shulze's question asked me to discard the
'one winner only' constraint. So far there is no sign of a dispute
there. I have a meta-rule which that rules that fail to test at 0
winners are rejected. Markus Schulze used the words "preferred
system" which interacts to remove the 'only 1 winner constraint' or
else remove the question or make it ask for nothing.

PS. I always used the word "system" to mean ballot papers, without
methods, rules, or sets of winners.


...
 >I certainly try to avoid personal criticisms.  Notice that I did not
 >use the phrase "close-minded".  I simply quoted something you had
 >said about open-mindedness, and stated that it summed up your opinion
 >on the subject.
 >

I am not going to saying that open mindednesss is desirable given
that advocates seems to like to persuade or educate or delude or
whatever. My opinion is that if a politician makes a valid complaint
over 50 years ago, and the method is not fixed, then even 30,000
advisers and method advocates can't make the valid complaint reduce
in size. People are familiar will with the seemingly unresolvable
dispute,
            understanding  versus  definition

 >Although I made no attempt to restate the usual arguments in favour
 >of Condorcet, I did suggest where you might find them.
 >

You are just writing words as if you have no familarity with voting
at all. Condorcet fails to find the right number of winners. Why not
list rules. I am not asking for delicate comments that the
disagreements between them can not have the petals of humans settle
upon them in the appropriate order. I ask you to rank rules and state
them. In a accidentally private I sent I did that myself.

In the meantime I will note the Condorcet fails the right number of
winners test. I suppose your using the word Condorcet was a mistake.

Open-mindedness pertains to people so it has no plain importance. Some
proof ought be provided just to fix up the doubts about relevance,
oughtn't it?.

The Tideman method is not a desirable method. Everyone agrees I
suppose and are not much concerned.

Questions Mr Blake Cretney did not answer. Why should an Ombudsman
pause before rejecting the Tideman method?.


$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

At 10:55 02.Feb.00 +1300 Wednesday, Craig Carey wrote:
 >At 15:04 01.Feb.00 , Blake Cretney wrote:
...
 >What getting the axioms devised in such a way that a voting paper
 > could have, on the back of the sheet, a statement saying what the
 > axioms are. It could say that proportionality is maximised but subject
 > to these rules; then list the axioms.
 >
 >What axioms do voters want to have on the back of the sheet(s)?.
 >

Can you tell me and all, the principles of the preferential voting
method that would interest voters. We all know that voters want
ruthlessly to get their own choices in and don't want the method to
behave very stupidly. In the absence of data showing otherwise, it is
going to be very likely that dumb wrong behaviour by the Tideman
method occurs.

Blake would not be telling an Ombudsman to be open minded.

In February the topic was on why the LIIAC theory was not
infinitesimal in its view, i.e. about slopes. This is what I
wrote:

...
 >If a voter happens to peep at the back of a voting paper, would
 > they want to want to see a dinosaur dog dinner of LIIAC global
 > outcome theory; or Condorcet "BC ranking" theory substituting for
 > where an idea of proportionality should be.
 >

... or replacing an idea of satisfactory compliance with monotonicity
and truncation resistance.

...
 >http://www.ombuds.gouv.qc.ca/en/publications/discours/cefrio.htm
...
 >(2)
 >http://www.ombuds.gouv.qc.ca/en/publications/rap_annuel/rapp95/sect01.htm
 >
 >"THE CASE FOR OPEN GOVERNMENT

A submission to my single-transferable-vote list said in an implied
way that Parliament would block use of better methods that turn up
later. Councils do not tend to deliberately plan to chose the worse
of two options when using open tendering. But in NZ the Green party
under co-leader Rod Donald is promoting a plan to require our councils
not presumed to be corrupt in tendering, to pick the worse of what could
have been 2 options. The reasoning can't be accessed. If I use the FOI,
the obscurely vicious anti-mayor and anti-councillor purpose that is
inferrable enough (since it picks the wrong winners is comparisons of
pairs of elections) is no longer accessible and there is nothing but a
democratic parliament figuratively wearing a dunce's hat, once asked
(if asked) "why when faced with two options, [albeit appearing at
different times, a easy topic for lawyers], it decided to choose the
worse?". In the balance, it may be a greater act of any government, to
prefer the good of their own ideas over the bad of immature algorithm
copiers.


...
 >(3)
 >http://www.ombuds.gouv.qc.ca/en/publications/communique/95121503.htm
 >
 >"3. Explains decisions clearly to citizens
 >   The Régie des marchés agricoles didn't sufficiently explain its
 >   decisions about setting milk prices (p. 12)."
 >

The ERS did not sufficiently explain the absolute logic to their
decision to choose he Alternative Vote Plus method, and there did not
need to be a comparison with an ideal: the absence of a sufficiently
high quality of reasoning led to the ERS advice being ignored.

 >---------------
 >
 >How do we get Tideman onto the back of a voting paper?.
 >
 >The topic of the mailing list is algorithms for making
 > decisions about individuals, and it must be entirely
 > appropriate for any such algorithm that would decide a national
 > election, to come under the consideration of an Ombudsman.
...


No is one suggesting that Tideman ought be used in a public
election. It is only a 1 one winner method. What are the grounds
for the decision to not have Tideman defined so that it can return
a set of winners naming 2 winners, ?. I don't really want to ask.

Thanks Bleak, for alerting me to my error.

---------------------------------


At 08:05 06.11.00 -0500 Monday, Donald E. Davison wrote:
 >- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 11-06-00
 >Greetings List,
 >
It might be better to just use the numbers (of electorates, etc.)
that are provided.

---------------------------------

The "SU" utility ideas of Mr Ossipoff seem to be to be an instance
of an attempt to widen a portal for a bad method but done in a
way that widens the portal far more than is admitted to.

Mr Cretney asked for a Condorcet example and that is all I found.

Mr Layton just wrote about utility, whatever that is.

--------------------------------

At 08:05 06.11.00 +1000 Monday, David Catchpole wrote:
 >(3) is just Pareto efficiency worded weirdly. It doesn't fail
 >majority-rules.
 >
 >On Sat, 4 Nov 2000 DEMOREP1 at aol.com wrote:
 >
A one sentence message and no definition or (outline of a
definition) of Pareto.







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