[EM] Craig's Folly and Dan's Folly are two peas in a pod:

Donald Davison donald at mich.com
Mon Dec 29 22:20:13 PST 2003


Greetings list members,

I had written:
"Craig is not alone in this lack of understanding of election methods.
On the IRV list, someone asked if IRV could be used to elect two
members to a city council.  Dan, who is an official of the Center for
Voting and Democracy replied and suggested that IRV be run two times.
Once to elect one member and a second time to elect the second member,
bypassing the name of the first winner during the routine of the
second run of IRV."

And Craig replied: "It does sound quite bad."


Donald here:  Hello Craig, good to see that we agree on something.

For the sake of a discussion I am going to give Dan's two seat method the
name of `Dan's Folly'.

It was no accident that I placed Dan's Folly after the text of your method
you call `2 winner 3 candidate IFPP'.  It was put there on purpose for you
and others to realize that the two methods were exactly the same.

Yes Craig, if you are the `Gifted Mathematician' that some love struck
female thinks you are, then you should have seen this to be true.  Maybe
you are also love struck, and being as love is blind, you have the perfect
excuse for not seeing things - you're off the hook.

Anyway, putting your love life aside, I will continue.

The two methods have all parts exactly the same:
    * They both use ranked ballots.
    * They both are two seat election methods.
    * They both elect the first candidate that has more than a quota.
      While IRV does not have an official quota, in this case the
      IRV first winner does win by more than what would be a quota.
    * They both transfer all ballots of the first winner to the next
      preferences.
    * They both elect the next leading candidate after the transfer
      as the second elected member.

The two methods are exactly the same, and being as we agree that one is
`quite bad', it only follows that both are quite bad.  A bad method by any
other name will still be bad.  Craig's Folly and Dan's Folly are two peas
in a pod.

You don't need to be a `Gifted Mathematician' to understand the math of
this logic. "If two methods are equal, then whatever is one of the methods,
the other method is the same."

This is the failure of your Craig's Folly `under a correct rule'.


Donald,





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