[EM] SARC definition improvement

[Markus Schulze]

Dear Mike,

to my opinion, you should drop SFC, GSFC, WDSC, SDSC, FBC and SARC.

(1) You should drop FBC and SARC. Condorcet methods don't meet FBC
or SARC. But in the website at http://home.pacbell.net/paielli/voting
you promote Condorcet methods and not Approval Voting. Therefore
there is no real reason to introduce FBC and SARC.

(2) You should drop SFC, GSFC, WDSC and SDSC.

Consider the following two criteria:

Criterion X: If a given candidate has the property Z, then he must
be elected.

Criterion Y: If a given candidate has the property Z, then there is
a way of voting that ensures that this candidate wins.

On the one side, if a given reader considers criterion X to be
important then criterion Y is superfluous. On the other side, if
this reader doesn't consider criterion X to be important, then he
will also not consider criterion Y to be important.

In short: If a given person doesn't consider it to be important that
if a majority of the voters strictly prefers candidate A to candidate
B then rather candidate A than candidate B should be elected, then he
will also not consider it to be important that if a majority of the
voters strictly prefers candidate A to candidate B then this majority
should have a way of voting that ensures that rather candidate A than
candidate B wins.

(3) You should drop WDSC, SDSC and SARC. These criteria say that under
certain conditions there must be a safe way of voting strategically
resp. that those who use a certain strategy must not be punished.

It makes sense to say that those who act sincerely should not be
punished. It makes sense to say that those who act insincerely
should not be rewarded. But there is absolutely no theoretical
justification for criteria that protect insincere voters.

(4) You should drop WDSC, SDSC and SARC. These criteria are not
intuitive. Even Steve Eppley who usually claims that he agrees
with you doesn't use these criteria. Even Steve Eppley prefers
Blake Cretney's terminology ("burying," "compromising," ...).

For example, independence from clones says that it should not be
possible to manipulate the result of the elections by spaming the
voters with a large number of identical candidates. As soon as a
given reader has understood the intention of independence from
clones, the exact mathematical definition of this criterion is
rather obvious. On the other side, a reader has to agree to too
many details before he can consider the exact definitions of WDSC,
SDSC or SARC to be intuitive.

******

You wrote (8 Sep 2000):
> Craig wants me to reject the notion that humans can be referred to
> when talking about voting methods. It isn't clear who Craig thinks
> is voting, or whose interests & concerns we should be interested in,
> if not those of humans. Not that I claim that Craig should be
> concerned about those things just because I am. But it would seem
> that Craig believes that I shouldn't care about those concerns
> because he doesn't.
>
> But I don't say that Craig's above-quoted attitude is original with
> him. Maybe Craig has just explained why the academics generally
> don't seem interested in the standards that concern actual voters.
>
> But though I may not agree with the priorities or goals of most
> academics, I wouldn't insult them by counting Craig among them.
> I merely mean that he may have copied their style and jargon, and
> verbalized their values more frankly than they usually do, in
> the above quoted statement by Craig.

It seems to me that Craig has once read Saari's "Geometry of Voting"
very superficially, that he hasn't understood it, but that he was
impressed by the great style of this book. Now Craig tries to copy
Saari's style and terminology without trying to understand it.

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