[EM]

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

>Blake's website is fairly clear that it contains his personal opinion on EM
>issues.

Right, that's why he calls his website the EM resource webpage :-)

> >The standards of majority rule & getting rid of the lesser-of-2-evils
>problems are
> >very widely agreed-on.
>
>Well, actually, they're not.  Some members advocate Borda or Cardinal
>Ratings, both of which fail majority rule.  In my opinion Approval does as
>well.

The only useful meaning for "failing majority rule" would be failing
criteria that measure for majority rule.

With pretty much any method (I'm not so sure about Borda) a majority
can get anything they all want to get. For the goal to elect a certain
candidate, it's easy with nearly all methods (again, maybe not with
Borda). The only problem is what it takes for them to _prevent_ someone
from winning, preventing one particular candidate from winning. What
does it take for a majority to make someone lose? That's important
because it's what the lesser-of-2-evils problem is about.
With most methods, the drastic strategy of order-reversal is needed.

WDSC says:

If a  majority of all the voters prefer Smith to Jones, then they
should have a way of voting that will ensure that Jones won't win,
without any member of that majority reversing a sincere pairwise
preference ordering.

[end of definition]

Approval passes WDSC. So does Cardinal Ratings. IRV fails WDSC.
Plurality fails WDSC. Condorcet passes WDSC, and other majority
defensive strategy criteria.

> >Norm, Markus, and I have said we prefer BeatpathWinner/Cloneproof SSD
> >to Tideman. You alone prefer Tideman. Steve Eppley has left the list,
> >for the time being at least. With Steve, it's 3 to 2. Without Steve
> >it's 3 to 1, among those who have expressed a preference on EM.
>
>Markus appears to have left too.

Markus hasn't left; he just doesn't post often.

For what it's worth, I prefer
>BeatpathWinner/Cloneproof SSD to Ranked Pairs.  However, I like Forest's
>latest Seeded Condorcet method as the best method for small committees and
>any situations without tallying technology.
>

I once proposed that Seeded Condorcet method to a meeting, in '86.
They had to take a vote, and a few people were proposing voting systems
different from the one that they usually used. They didn't accept my
suggestion.

A better name might be Approval-seeded SP (Sequential Pairwise).

But that method doesn't ensure something important that Condorcet
ensures:

With Condorcet, if a majority prefer the sincere CW to Jones, they
can make Jones lose by merely voting sincerely, provided that no
one falsifies a preference.

That isn't true with Approval-Seeded SP. And what if someone _does_
falsify a preference? Then Approval-Seeded SP can fail WDSC.

Say there are 3 candidates, and your favorite comes in "middle" in
the Approval count. Your favorite is B.

B is sincere CW--is preferred to both A & C by more voters than vice-versa. 
A pairwise beats C.

The Approval finishing order is
A, B, C. Some A voters truncate in the BC election. So, even though
B is sincere CW, B loses to C.

When C goes agains A, A wins. That's a violation of SFC. Anything
that violates SFC is also violating GSFC, a generalization of SFC.

That can happen when everyone who prefers B to A votes sincerely.

If the A voters instead order-reverse against B in the BC vote,
it can become necessary for members of the B>A majority to reverse
a sincere preference in order to keep A from winning, and so WDSC
is violated too.

Condorcetists & Approvalists have good reasons for advocating those
methods.

Mike Ossipoff

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