[EM] Rob reply: FBC vs CC. SFC. RV.,

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

Rob--

I'd said:

>A voter will favorite-bury if, for that voter, the important goal is to 
>keep an unacceptable candidate from winning, and if favorite-burial will 
>increase the probability of accomplishing that.

I posit that very few voters will be in that predicament.  It is my
experience that most voters prefer candidates with a chance to win.
People that like to be part of quixotic movements are exceedingly rare.

I reply:

Thank you for proving my point. You believe your tv when it tells you that 
only the Democrat could beat the Republican, and that to support someone 
other than that media- anointed, corporate-bought Democrat is "quixotic". 
You feel isolated, believinig that only you and some tiny subset of the 
population want something better than Kerry.  After all, doesn't the tv 
represent and portray the true America? So of course you obediently vote for 
the Democrat, however dishonest he is, and however odious his policies and 
record.

There are people with progressive goals, who prefer Nader to the Democrat. 
As you point out, most of those people feel compelled to vote for the 
Democrat.

I have merely suggested that they'll do the same when the voting system is 
BeatpathWinner.

If I haven't made myself clear, FBC is important so that those giveaway 
progressives won't feel compelled to keep concealing what they want.

When I referred to acceptable and unacceptable candidates, I clarified that 
the lesser-of-2-evils progressives have a very different notion about what 
is acceptable, as compared to what I consider acceptable. When you talk to 
such a progressive, they make it clear that the Republican is the 
unacceptable, and that anyone better than the Republican is acceptable. It 
was such voters that I was talking about.

So, as I said, these people, if their only goal is to ensure that an 
unacceptable (Republican) won't win, will do what it takes to minimize the 
probability of that happening.

And, aside from that,  the number who will favorite-bury for that reason is 
further increased when voters who don't understand the count method don't 
even know how unlikely it is that they could regret not favorite-burying. I 
covered that in my previous message. Then it won't just be people who will 
do whatever it takes to minimize the probability of a Republican win. It 
will also include people who'd only do that if they felt that the FBC 
failure might be likely.

You continued:


Moreover, the cases where sincere voting regret are rare.

I reply:

As I said:

1. That's irrelevant. I'm talking about people whose only goal in the 
election is to keep the Republican from winning, to minimize the probability 
that the Republican will win, whatever it takes.

2. And someone who doesn't know how the count works might not know how 
likely it is that they could regret not favorite-burying.

You continued:

Combine that
with the innate desire that I think people who vote contrarian ballots
have to "make a statement", and I suspect we're talking about a
diminishingly small number of people who will reverse order.

I reply:

What we have to go on is that the practice is near-universal in Plurality 
elections, and also common in IRV elections. Yes, the evidence I've prsented 
about Australian voting strategy is "anecdotal" because no one has done a 
scientific study--I've onlyheard from an increasing number of Australians 
who say that favorite-burial isn't uncommon in IRV.
People fear that they'd "waste [their] vote" if they didn't vote one of the 
Big-Two party candidates in 1st place, with their favorite ranked somewhere 
below. What does it take to convince you? Ok, a scientific study. Maybe 
someday someone will conduct one. In the meantime, I've heard from a number 
of Australians.

You wrote:

I'm trying to see how this:
"If a Condorcet candidate exists, and if a majority prefers this
candidate to another candidate, then the other candidate should not win
if that majority votes sincerely and no other voter falsifies any
preferences."

.../always/ leads to this:


"SFC requires that the majority of voters who prefer the Condorcet
candidate to another particular candidate vote sincerely (neither
falsify nor truncate their preferences), and it also requires that no
other voter falsifies preferences"

I reply:

First, please note that I don't recognize either of those wordings as mine. 
So, if one doesn't lead to the either, and neither was said by me, then what 
does that say about SFC? Nothing.

That first SFC definition that you quoted is definitely not my wording. Your 
2nd statement of course is not a definition of SFC, and so there would be no 
reason to expect it to mean the same as the previous wording that someone 
intended as a definition of SFC.

I would probably say that SFC _stipulates_ sincere voting by that majority, 
rather than using the word "require". That's because, as I use the term, a 
criterion's requirement is something else. SFC's requirement is that B not 
win. That that majority vote sincerely is a stipulation that is part of 
SFC's premise.

In any case, you needn't expect an intended definition of SFC to mean the 
same as a wording of part of SFC's premise, which is only part of SFC.

Anyway, here's SFC:

If no one falsifies a preference, and if a majority prefer the CW to 
candidate B, and vote sincerely, then B shouldn't win.

[end of SFC definition]

Please, in the future, when challenging SFC, refer to _my_ wording of its 
definition.

You continued:

MDDA would seem to encourage truncation in rare situations.

I reply:

Perhaps, but MDDA also encourages truncation in common situations. With 
ordinary MDDA, you should rank only those candidates to whom you want to 
give an Approval vote.

And, aside from that, if it's an acceptable/unacceptable situation, even 
with Deluxe MDDA, which has a separate Approval cutoff and power truncation, 
you should power truncate all the unacceptables.

You continued:

I agree that SFC is a very important criterion, if perhaps misnamed.

I reply:

The name refers to the fact that the criterion is about plausible conditions 
under which, with complying methods, voters need no strategy in order to 
accomplish the specified goal.

You continued:

I'm sure there were long discussions about naming it during the long
period where I wasn't very active on the list.

I reply:

Some people objected to the name, on the grounds that it's been proven that 
no nonprobabilistic method is entirely strategy-free. But that objection 
isn't valid, because the criterion is about conditions under which voters 
can accomplish a specific goal without strategy.

You continued:

This may be a seemingly minor quibble, but I raise this because I
consider the two SFC quotes above to both be very important criteria,
and I'm trying to figure out how both apply to MDDA.

I reply:

I don't claim that those two quotes apply to MDDA, but I do claim that my 
SFC definition applies to MDDA, in the sense that MDDA meets that criterion.

I'd said:

>Realistically, I propose RV, with more rating-levels than Approval.

Range is a political stillborn.  This example kills it:

100 voters, two candidates, scale of 0-10:

90 voters: A=7, B=6
10 voters: A=0, B=10

A:630
B:640

B wins, even though 90% of voters prefer A to B.

I reply:

But how is that a problem? The A voters didn't feel strongly about A vs B, 
and they therefore chose to not dominate the choice. They chose to let the 
choice be made by someone who felt more strongly than they did.

For a 2-candidate race, obviously neither RV, Approval, BeatpathWinner, 
MDDA, nor any other improved voting system is needed. But all of those 
methods work fine with two candidates.

You continued:

There is no possible way Range will ever get serious support

I reply:

RV is well known and well-accepted in the Olympics. Everyone is familiar 
with being asked to rate things up to 10. RV has a big head-start on new 
methods such as BeatpathWinner, Approval, or IRV.

You continue:

, given that
weakness.

I reply:

No one is forced to vote sincerely if they want to maximize their voting 
power, their power to maximize their expectation.

Of course BeatpathWinner has advantages (Condorcet's Criterion, Smith 
Criterion, WDSC, SDSC, but especially SFC & GSFC,). But that isn't the same 
as saying that RV has a serious problem. Anyway, BeatpathWinner fails FBC.

You continue:
If it manages to pass constitutional muster, it goes against
what I suspect is the instinct of most voters out there, including
myself.

I reply:

The instinct to not let a set of voters indicate the strength of their 
preference, choosing to vote a weak preference in order to let more 
choice-power be had by people to whom the choice is more important? 
Shouldn't they be free to do as they wish? They could strategize, to 
maximize their applied strength, if they wished to.

Mike Ossipoff

_________________________________________________________________
Is your PC infected? Get a FREE online computer virus scan from McAfee® 
Security. http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963