[EM] Steph: Truncation, 11/25/02

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

Steph--

You wrote:

As I just said to Adam, I do not think the CW in my example
is poorly supported. Taking the winning votes advance as a support measure,
my CW leads by 10 points over both its contestors.
Compared to your "Strong" CW in Adam's example (51 to 49) who only
has 2 points of advance, I find your definition not that relevant...

I reply:

I haven't defined "strong CW". And I used "poorly-supported CW" only
as a convenient way to name the often-encountered example that you
posted. So we really don't need to evaluate that definition. I don't
use it in any criteria definitions.

About your examples though: With 11 voters, your CW only has 4
voters who bother ranking him over B. And with 13 voters, your CW
only has 5 voters who bother voting him over B. I don't know what you
mean by relevant, but, as I said, it seems rather unreasonable for you
to expect wv to protect that CW from truncation, especially when
your own method doesn't protect the CW from truncation by voters
over whose candidate a majority have ranked him. You're trying to
hold wv to a standard much higher than the standard that your method
fails.

So, as I said, when you have defined a method that protects all CWs,
which is what you seem to want, then that would be the best time to
start criticising methods that don't achieve that.

You continue:

One point good for you, my counter example does not invalid SFC and GSFC.

It just questions their relevance.

I reply:

No, _you_ question their relevance. Your example merely shows the
truncation defeat of a CW that few people care enough about to vote for.
If your example questions the relevance of anything, it raises the
question of its own relevance.

But our defensive strategy criteria needn't be relevant to you. As
I always say, standards are a subjective, individual matter. Just because 
majority rule and the goal of getting rid of the lesser-of-2-evils problem 
are major reasons why many voting reform advocates want
a better voting system, that doesn't mean that those standards should
be important to you. Even though so many voters cite the lesser-of-2-evils 
problem as their reason for being afraid to express their favorite.

A big advantage of Approval and Condorcet(wv) over Plurality, IRV,
and Condorcet(margins) is that Approval & Condorcet(wv) don't give
voters strategic need to bury their favorite. Widespread
favorite-burial is socially undesirable because it conceals public
wishes. Supposedly we'd like the voting system to be responsive to
public wishes. Governement isn't going to represent public wishes very
well if the voting system strategically forces people to not express
their wishes, to in fact reverse their real wishes on their ballot.

Mike Ossipoff


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