[EM] Russ reply, 2 March, ´05, 1151 GMT

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

Russ said:

FBC is a great example of a Mike-style criterion that does nothing but
complicate the idea it attempts to express. Why did Mike create this
"criterion"? Probably because he didn't understand that other election
method criteria are based on cast and tally rules votes only.

I reply:

What are cast and tally rules votes?? :-)

Are you trying to say that other criteria are based on votes rather than 
preferences? This may be difficult for you to understand, but my goal never 
was to copy other criteria. If there had been other criteria that made the 
distinctions that my criteria make, then I wouldn´t have written my 
criteria.

Russ continues:

And what does FBC mean in standard English? It means that Approval never
gives any voter any incentive to not approve his favorite candidate,
whereas plurality, IRV and other methods do.

I reply:

No. FBC doesn´t mean that. FBC´s defiition doesn´t mention any voting 
system. But if you wanted to reword it informally, you could say that FBC 
complying methods never give anyone incentive to bury their favorite.

Russ continues:

Thanks for that brilliant
insight, Mike.

I reply:

You mean the one that you asked for permission to put up at your website, 
and then at first resisted deleting when I told you to delete my 
contributions from your website?

You know, there´s reason to question Russ´s sincerity about his sudden 
opposition to my criteria, because he asked me for permission to have them 
at his website; he kept them at his website for years, he kept asking 
questions about them, trying to undestand them (but now reveals that he 
doesn´t understand what he posted at his website); and then strenuously 
objected when I told him to remove my contributions from his website. But 
within a few days after that request, Russ suddenly discovers that my 
criteria aren´t "useful", and begins to parrot the objections to them that 
he´d heard all along.

I must admit that I´m not interested in whiether the facts involved in 
compliance and noncompliance are newly-discovered. I´m not interested in who 
discovered those facts. I´m interested in the methods´propoerties, 
regardless of whether or ot their faults and advantages are new discoveries.

Russ continues:

But wait ... isn't voting another candidate *equal* to your favorite a
kind of "betrayal" too?

I reply:

Another astounding new discovery from Russ.

Russ coninues:

If I told my wife that she has equal standing
with some other woman, I'll bet she'd feel "betrayed"! Which just goes
to show that Mike's "criteria" can be misleading.

I reply:

Russ apparently would like methods that meet a criterion that requires that 
no one  ever have incentive to vote someone equal to or over his favorite, 
or that requires that no one ever have incenive to reverse a preference or 
fail to vote a preference. Sorry, Russ, but I can´t help you there.

But though we can´t have everything that we´d like, criteria are about what 
we _can_ have in a voting system.

Mike Ossipoff

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