[EM] Criteria that don't mention preferences?

[Ernest Prabhakar]

Hi guys,

At the risk of rushing in where angels fear to tread...

On Feb 2, 2004, at 7:36 AM, Markus Schulze wrote:
> in so far as election methods are defined only on the cast
> preferences and not on the sincere preferences, whether a
> given election method satisfies a given criterion must be
> reflected in the way this method uses the cast preferences.
> Therefore, there is no need to include the sincere
> preferences in the definition of a criterion.

I think there's really two different issues at stake here.  To first 
order, I agree that election methods should be defined in terms of how 
they handle cast ballots.   But to second order, I think we need to 
accept the fact that sometimes people will cast insincere ballots for 
strategic reasons.  I think it is a valid goal to not penalize people 
for voting sincerely.

We can quibble about the exact terminology to use (and knowing this 
list, I'm sure we will :-) but I think it is important to recognize 
that there *is* an appropriate place for worry about 'sincerity', even 
if its difficult to measure.

-- Ernie P.