[EM] Markus's '98 Cloneproof SSD wording

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

> > My main question here is whether that procedure that I describe above
> > has a fault.
>
>Blake Cretney demonstrated in his 3 Nov 1998 mail that
>monotonicity is violated when one simply re-applies this algorithm
>(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/election-methods-list/message/1955).

Thanks for pointing that out. Now I have to tell some people that
the tie procedure should be different from what I've told them.

The re-application of BeatpathWinner or Cloneproof SSD to the
candidates who remain tied after Random Ballot doesn't cause any
problems then?

Organizations, in that case, could choose whether to just keep using
Random Ballot among the winners, or to break Random Ballot's ties by
re-applying the count rule, and break the count rule's ties by Random
Ballot.

>************
>
>You wrote (16 Mar 2001):
> > As you said, your procedure sounds the same as Cloneproof SSD, but
> > without mentioning cycles. But the price of not mentioning cycles
> > seems to be a requirement for more paragraphs. And cycles are easy to
> > check for while calculating the Schwartz set. But your wording might
> > be more accepted by audiences who don't like to hear about cycles.
>
>There are rather other reasons why my description is longer. For
>example: I suggest that when there is more than one defeat with the same
>number of votes for the winner then the defeat with the largest number
>of votes for the loser should be dropped. I wrote in my 14 Nov 1998 mail
>(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/election-methods-list/message/2291):

Yes, Norm pointed that out. It improves decisiveness without any
loss of other properties, and so I've adopted it too for my
recommendations.

Actually your wording isn't longer because of avoiding mention of
cycles. It's merely longer because you incorporate the tie solution
in the main numbered procedure. I find it simpler to break it up
into count-rule and tie-solution, because either is briefer when
written separately. But that's of course purely a matter of personal
preference.

It's occurred to me that saying "Stop when there are no cycles in
the Schwartz set" is the same as saying "Stop when there are no
defeats among the Schwartz set".

So avoiding mention of cycles needn't make the wording longer, as I
initially believed. Cloneproof SSD first occurred to me in terms of
stopping when there are no cycles in the Schwartz set, but putting
it in terms of defeats should make it easier to propose to most people.

Then SSD & Cloneproof SSD are related in a neat opposite way:
SSD stops when someone is undefeated. Cloneproof SSD stops when
no one in the Schwartz set has a defeat.

Mike Ossipoff

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