[EM] A wrong monotonicity rule "good" since mishandling coalitions

Craig Carey research at ijs.co.nz
Sun Aug 18 05:14:12 PDT 2002



I shall reply briefly since I am considering leaving again this mailing
list of people that have no interest in truth in preferential voting.



At 2002\08\17 10:37 -0700 Saturday, Richard Moore wrote:
 >Craig Carey wrote:
...
 > > Your definition did not keep the other papers unchanging.
 >

Here is the original text:

-----------------------------------------------------
At 2002\08\16 22:52 +1200 Friday, Craig Carey wrote:
 >
 >
 >At 2002\08\15 23:44 -0700 Thursday, Richard Moore wrote:
 > >Craig Carey wrote:
 > >> The definition of monotonicity was wrong. In general (i.e. for some
 > >> number of winners and candidates), all 3 rules ought be rejected for
 > >> failing a perfect method.
 > >
 > >Hmm, I wonder what was wrong about the definition of monotonicity. It
 > >certainly called for a never-negative response to any single ballot
 > >substitution. Perhaps there is a miswording somewhere; I didn't spot
 > >one on my final proofreading though. Of course, monotonicity in the
 > >pure mathematical sense would also allow for methods that have a
 > >never-positive response to a ballot substitution; but by convention
 > >that's not what we mean when we talk about election methods being
 > >monotonic. In fact, all the second case does is reverse the
 > >categorization of the ballots, so that what we wished to count as an
 > >"A>B" ballot is effectively a "B>A" ballot and vice versa.
 >
 >Hopefully the public definition of Monotonicity allows changes to any
 >number of 'ballot papers' (preference lists) but it requires that no
 >paper change except for having the preference of a given candidate
 >either [also given beforehand]:
 >
 >* move to the left and towards the 1st preference (this include making
 >   the preference appear on a paper), xor
 >
 >* move away from the first preference (and this includes the cases
 >   where the preference drops off the end).
 >
 >Your definition did not keep the other papers unchanging.
 >
 >Also your rule is against the style of STV in that gets the treatment
 >of coalitions handled wrongly. For exampl, (and this is a rough
...
-----------------------------------------------------

The word "papers" ought be preferences, in the text

     "Your definition did not keep the other papers unchanging."


 >
 >Easily fixed, just change "Replacing a ballot" to "Replacing
 >only one ballot".  Coverage for replacing multiple ballots
 >(with all replacements favoring the same candidate) is trivially
 >shown by induction. There's no impact on the proof.
 >

That does not fix the problem but it seems to follow after my
single mistake of using the word "papers" when I meant "preferences".

You can take it back for re-drafting.

Montonicity ideas:

* if the method is linearised then the instant weighting of papers is not
  negative. Neverthess that is a bit unclear on whether it allows the
  papers to either circumvent, or else run into, a demand for insincere
  voting (power available but not achieved by following what is show on
  the preference lists).

* view from the viewpoint of a single candidate. What you have is using
  two candidates. If you ever get the definition out of the state of being
  rejected and into a defined form, it could be analysed to see if it is
  not really about swapping of preferences at all, but it is more like the
  AND-ed product of two simpler quantifier logic expressions.


 > > Also your rule is against the style of STV
 >
 >Good!
 >
 > > in that gets the treatment
 > > of coalitions handled wrongly. For exampl, (and this is a rough
...


 > > example with the other papers missing):
 >
 >Without commenting on the validity of this extension, I'll
 >note that coalitions have no relevance to a theorem about
 >two-candidate pairwise comparison.

At the moment it is a rule that you don't want to quote just after
claiming to have altered it. A lot of argument saying why it is even
considered is needed.

So far, every single one of your careful checking of the rules has
been eliminated by your act of altering the definition of the rule.

Just above you attempt to say that you want to get a rule that is
unacceptably wrong in the constraints it applies about coalitions.

Readers are waiting for the proof that you have actually implemented
the desire to get the rule running wrongly. You gave a test for the
rule which is that it must be wrong. By such arguments you make it
plain that proper view of others is to reject the method until it
get past your own meta-wrongs, one of which requires that the rule
be brought to a state where it must be rejected.

So far I do not see any ground for asking you to detail a
motivation for the new misnamed rule that is nothing like
monotonicity but that you name "monotonicity" or something.

Certainly you can expert that men like Forest Simmons and Mike Ossipoff
will not suggesting something amiss in what your write.


....

 > > It apparently says this:  If candidate A wins the 1st then candidate A
 > > wins the 2nd:
 > >
 > >     (1st)   (A B C D E F G)     <-- an added paper to unspecified
 >system
 > >    <--->
 > >     (2nd)   (B C D E F G A)
 >
 >That's just a blatant misinterpretation. Permuting the preferences on
 >a ballot is not the same as permuting the ballots.
 >

There is no obvious good reason to rule out that I introduced a new idea
here.

While it is not about papers (a instance of a use of a wrong word that
should have been "preferences"), the example obviously is, and was
intended to be, an example showing that the new (recently altered)
rule will require a wrong inconsiderateness towards coalitions.

Now the rule is too weak to be plausible since Richard reduced it to
only handling a single paper, when it can be extended to handle more
than one paper.

...
 >Ignoring it won't make it vanish by itself. It has everything to

That is untrue. If your rule were promoted to 10 nations, then each of
those is a nation that has to swallow your lie that it is "Good!" that
the rule require an inconsiderate internal consideration of
coalitions. They can use the word you used, "good". You are in an
inconsistent position for not correcting mistakes, aspiring to something
wrong, and justifying it with the idea that that that is 'good'.

I assume aims to keep the rule undesirable and is experimenting with
lying to the Election Methods List of Rob Lanphier. But that experiment
is evident in every month. Certainly it could cause me to leave. One thing
that I imagine that will not occur is for Forest Simmons to post up a
message saying that he too detected the aspiration to be untrue.

Both of my mailing lists, politicians-and-polytopes, and the
single-transferable-vote mailing list, don't experience such a
pointless problem.

I don't see why anybody should pay attention to Richard since has yet
to write on the other 2 wrong rules, and once this rule stabilised,
there is some uninviting algebra problem of trying to factorise it,
which could lead to yet modifications of the rule by Richard. A better
idea is to say it is wrongly named.

Is Richard trying to appeal to the mob instinct of the members by making
a clear show of perfectly in the wrong. These members can't solve 2
candidate problems and stirring them is hard to imagine at best.

...
 > >  >We really do have a communications problem here! I haven't said there
 > >  >*is* a need to use pairwise comparing. The closest I came to saying
 > >

That seems to contradict the original statement so there the position of
the other implying pairwise comparing was needed for the solution of
2 candidate elections, was abandoned (and not in the last message).

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