[EM] unspecified conditions are optional

MIKE OSSIPOFF nkklrp at hotmail.com
Mon Sep 18 11:30:29 PDT 2000


I've just realized that if certain things about candidates, voters,
voters' sincere preferences, or voters' ballots, aren't specified
as conditions in the criterion's premise, then I was mistaken to
say that they still have to be stated in an example. But the
person trying to write a failure example should be able to
configure such unspecified things any way he wants to.

For instance, for a Participation badexample, the example-writer
shouldn't have to specify sincere preferences, for the wording
of Participation that says that adding to the count a ballot that
votes X over Y shouldn't change the winner from X to Y.

I'm not proposing rules. But I'd like to exactly say these
things that we all have unstated understandings about, because
it's possible to bring up objections that require definite meanings
for these things. Some of Markus's objections are like that. Maybe
some of Blakes will be. I don't want such objections to be able to
take advantage of there being a murky, unclarified area where a
misunderstanding or a claimed misunderstanding can't be given a
definite answer and where the misunderstanding seems justified.

Mike Ossipoff



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