[EM] Richard reply, 16 February, 1020 GMT

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

Richard--

You said:

Mike, I am not attributing the phrase to you and there's no need for
you to try to attribute it to me. It's from the electionmethods.org
site. It was my impression that, though you may not be the author, you
are knowledgeable about the content of that site. But since you don't
seem to recognize the words at all, it's possible I was wrong about
that.

I reply:

Yes.  You can ask me what my definitions are, but I don't know all the 
details of the modified wordings at the website.

You continued:

Here's the  statement from the website:

"Strong Defensive Strategy Criterion (SDSC)
"Statement of Criterion

"If a majority prefers one particular candidate to another, then they
should have a way of voting that will ensure that the other cannot
win, without any member of that majority reversing a preference for
one candidate over another or falsely voting two candidates equal."
                                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I reply:

My preferred way to say that is "...or vote a candidate equal to a candidate 
whom s/he likes better." Or  to just say "...voting a candidate equal to or 
over a candidate whom s/he likes better". The wording that you underlined 
could also be worded "...or votes 2 candidates equal though preferring one 
to the other".

I'd thought that you'd found "falsely voting two candidates equal" in a 
sincere voting definition at the website, because you were asking about 
candidates falsely voted equal in regards to a question about sincere 
voting.

I've posted here my definition of voting one candidate equal to another.

I should add that "...likes better" of course should be replaced with 
wording using "prefer", because I've said more about the definition of 
"prefer".

You said:

I wasn't aware that you had defined that phrase on this list in a way
that is different from the website. This may come as a shock to you,
but I don't have time to read every word you post, Mike!

I reply:

Perhaps you didn't notice that I _asked_ if you'd seen one of the many times 
that I've posted that definition here. It should be obvious that if I 
thought that you'd read every word that I'd posted, I wouldn't have asked if 
you'd seen that definition.

But apparently you do have time to scour our website looking for 
ambiguities, and to make many failed attempts at writing criteria equivalent 
to the majority defensive strategy criteria, though I've already told you 
how to write votes-only criteria eqivalent to the majorilty defensive 
strategy criteria.

Not that I object to anyone pointing out ambiguities at the website. I've 
told Russ that someone at EM is scrutinizing the website under a microscope, 
for ambiguities, and that we should restore my  more precise and unambiguous 
definitions to the website.

How very public-spirited and generous of you to want spend so much time to 
improve the definitions at the website by finding their ambiguities, and to 
want to help us find alternative wordings of the defensive strategy 
criteria.

Mike Ossipoff

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