[EM] Discover Magazine article

[Markus Schulze]

Dear Mike,

you wrote (25 Oct 2000):
> Ok, Markus, but what would you say to a suggestion that we
> count the ballots by Tideman(wv) and by BeatpathWinner, and then
> hold a 2nd balloting so people can vote which of those 2 winners
> they prefer? That sounds democratic to me.
>
> ...
> 
> If EM ever needs to vote on something, a good system might be
> to count the ballots by BeatpathWinner and by Tideman(wv), and
> choose the winner that pairwise-beats the other.

I would say that this method violates independence from clones
and monotonicity.

You wrote (25 Oct 2000):
> But say, for reasons of simplicity, we aren't permitted to count
> the ballots by 2 methods. Then, the best we can do toward the
> goals in the previous paragraphs would be to use the count rule
> that usually picks someone who pairwise-beats the other count
> rule's winner.

Due to Steve's opinion, the Tideman method is better than the
Schulze method because in those cases where the Tideman method
and the Schulze method choose different candidates the Tideman
winner usually pairwise beats the Schulze winner. To my opinion,
the Schulze method is better than the Tideman method because
in those cases where the Schulze method and the Tideman method
choose different candidates the worst pairwise defeat of the
Schulze winner is usually weaker than the worst pairwise
defeat of the Tideman winner.

You wrote (25 Oct 2000):
> As for Copeland, of course Copeland would likely do very well
> in winner comparisons. But, as Steve pointed out, the fact
> that we have more important criteria doesn't mean that, when
> those criteria are met by 2 methods, doesn't mean that we're
> forbidden to then consider winner comparisons. None of us
> advocate Copeland, of course.

There is a difference between Steve and you. Steve considers
independence from clones to be very important. You consider
independence from clones to be "too unrealistic to be
important." Therefore election methods like highest Copeland
ranked BC winner are better than Tideman due to Steve's
argumentation when one doesn't consider independence from
clones to be useful.

Markus Schulze