[EM] May's Theorem did not use words "Strictly prefer"

[Craig Carey]

This message does nothing mope than fram up Mr May as being dishonest
enough to use the word "strictly prefer". So I want to see a retraction
or an apology.

The words "strictly prefer" have not been defined by Mr Schulze.
I guess Mr May did not have Shulze's purpose of pretending to know
something about preferential voting.

This following text is quite bad since there is a precise reference to
an article of Mr May. That is in the same sentence that pairs up
Mr May as having use the idea of "strictly prefers".




At 2005-01-03 18:01 +0100 Monday, Markus Schulze wrote:
>Dear Craig,
>
>you wrote (3 Jan 2005):
>> Here is a brief description of the 1952 May 'theorem' I got from the
>> Internet:
>>
>> | May's theorem: When choosing among only two options, there is only one
>> | social decision rule that satisfies the requirements of anonymity,
>> | neutrality , decisiveness and positive responsiveness, and it is the
>> | majority rule.
>
>May also presumed that the result depends only on whether the individual
>voter strictly prefers candidate A to candidate B, strictly prefers
>candidate B to candidate A or is indifferent between candidate A and
>candidate B, but it must not depend on the ratings of the individual
>voters for the different candidates (Kenneth O. May, "A Set of
>Independent Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Simple Majority
>Decision," Econometrica, vol. 20, pp. 680--684, 1952).
>
>However, Hylland proved that when there are only two candidates and
>the used single-winner election method is strategyproof then the
>result depends only on whether the individual voter strictly prefers
>candidate A to candidate B, strictly prefers candidate B to candidate A
>or is indifferent between candidate A and candidate B (Aanund Hylland,
>"Strategy Proofness of Voting Procedures with Lotteries as Outcomes
>and Infinite Sets of Strategies," University of Oslo, 1980).
>
>Therefore, I interpret May's theorem in connection with Hylland's
>theorem as follows:
>
>   When there are only two candidates then the unique anonymous,
>   neutral, decisive, and strategyproof single-winner election
>   method is FPP. Therefore, every single-winner election method
>   should satisfy the following criterion:
>
>   When there are only two candidates and the number of voters who
>   strictly prefer candidate A to candidate B is strictly larger
>   than the number of voters who strictly prefer candidate B to
>   candidate A, then candidate A should be elected with certainty.
>


The reputation of Mr Schulze is (locally) trashed in the message
before the name "Hylland" is encountered. May got framed as being
dumb enough to use SCHULZE's "prefers" summing idea.
The comments on Hylland lack a reference so the author was
mot diligent in the 2nd part.


A better plan than that of making it look like Mr May is dumb,
is for Mr Shulze to define the linear sum using the symbols
of algebra. That is slipperly slope down to the conclusion that
it was untrue for Shulze to say that his Floyd algorithm was
monotonic (it was said in the October 2003 Voting Matters).

Some wasps lay eggs in caterpillars. It seems a little similar to
how Mr Shulze portrayed Mr May as having understood the words
"strictly prefer". If Mr May popped in and asked for a correction
then he may have bad luck in dealings with the man in Berlin.
I don't know if Mr May is still alive or not.

---

For over a year Mr Shulze has left "strictly prefer" undefined.

I was saying that it involved 5 categories, but 13 is another
possibility.
Suppose the categories are these 13 categories.

()

(A...)
(A...B...)
(A...B)
(...A...)
(...A...B...)
(...A...B),
 and all the same with B and A swapped.

Now that "A" is in the 1st preference, it might be possible to
create a method that is monotonic. At least 6 of the 13 weights
will be 0.

Shulze has already claimed that his Floyd algorithm was
monotonic, which was untrue. So he might hold a desire to create
a monotonic Condorcet method. Thus we now have this precise idea:

   Mr Schulze is using the word "strictly prefer" to define
   13 real numbers that are the weights for the sums.

------------------------

Suppose the meaningless "strictly prefer" words of Schulze was altered
and then he said that this was a rule:
    ______________________________________________________________

     "If candidate 'A' gets Teddy-Bear-ed, by *all* other
      candidates, then candidate 'A' will be shot at the SS HQ.
   _______________________________________________________________


I ask people to observe the word "strictly" can replace the
words "strictly prefer"


The word "strictly" stops something that does not happen anyway.
The word "strictly" stops 2 candidates from squeezing into a single
preference.

Shulze must be creating a show for Americans: pump or sump or siphon,
lies into their group, on how to conceal secret meanings and leave
all the Americans short-changed and stuck with nothing but what
Milton and Shakespeare and others, bequeathed to them.

It is as if the storm of Beethoven's 6th symphony has finished
with the storm movement. That could symbolize the thinking of
SCHULZE when endlessly leading us to the untruth which is that
13 or 7 or 5 weighting numbers are defined using the word
"prefers".

As if the man in Berlin is the man at the top of the pyramid in
the cinema file "Conan the Barbarian", subscribers are dropped into a
sure need to beg or plead from SHULZE, or else never not be told
what the word (creating a completely wrong sum), "prefer", means.

If Bart writes in then he might trample on delicate evidence and
produce a definition of his own.

We want a monotonic method: not a method from Mr Shulze that is
both perfectly undefined and wrongly claimed to be monotonic.

Creating good algorithms requires clear thinking.
That clarity of thinking would help Americans here understand why
all preferential methods (and Floyd-ized dud methods) of Mr SHULZE
get incinerated in the first seconds during a fairness checkup.

I could be writing on nothing more than Mr Schulze's adaptation
to a universe that holds out to incompetent method designers,
the virtuously strict tests of fairness.