[EM] Reply to SFC objection

[Ken Kuhlman]

Sorry Mike, I should have said "I don't see the purpose of the
criterion," rather than "the value of.."  The question was a matter of
clarity, not of value.   Rob Lanphier kindly clarified the criterion
in another posting (thanks Rob!), so my response here will be limited.
 I see now that the SFC applies to strict majorities only.

I do want to discuss the issue of "sincerity" a little further
however.  I had written "it doesn't matter if the reason for the votes
was honest, strategic, or if the voter's mothers told them what to
do."  From your response it seems I need to clarify this statement.

If we're talking about just one profile (yes, one set of votes), then
what I said was true.  Of course, a criterion might then validly apply
a constraint against what is strategically possible with manipulation
of the votes (creating another profile in the process that has a
defined loser or winner).  But I don't see that in the SFC definition,
so there doesn't appear to be a reason for the sincerity constraint.

Stated another way, one man's garbage is another man's treasure, or in
this case, one man's strategically generated ballot set is another
man's honest one.  If you give me a set of "strategic" ballots, I'll
give it back to you as a sincere one.


Finally, to correct myself, it's not true that both the original SFC
wording & the revised one are both Smith criteria for strict
majorities as I'd said.   Instead, the original SFC wording is a
weakened Condorcet criteria & it's the revised one that appears to be
the weakened Smith.  Here it is again:

> On 10/5/05, MIKE OSSIPOFF <nkklrp at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > Any sincere-voting majority is guaranteed that no one whom they all like
> > less than the CW will win.

Thanks,
-Ken