[EM] Paul: All preferences counted equally

[Jobst Heitzig]

Dear Mike!

What Paul meant by "10 counters" is the pairwise matrix, which in case
of 5 candidates and complete ballots without equal ranks contains only
10 significant numbers (one for each of the pairwise races). His point
seems to be that basing the method only on those numbers ignores
valuable information.

Yours, Jobst



MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote:

> Paul--
> 
> You said:
> 
> My "discomfort" (can't quite call it a criticism) with any method that
> counts votes using the pairwise matrix is that my "A (1st) > B (5th)" vote
> in a 4-way race is negated by some other voter's "B (fourth) > A (fifth)"
> vote. Neither of us particularly want B, but by the time the other voter is
> ranking fourth and fifth she's in the "who cares?" part of her ballot.
> 
> I reply:
> 
> Counting all voted pairwise preferences equally does a lot to get rid of
> strategy problems. But James GA has proposed a method that weights
> pairwise preference votes with ratings differences, and it works fine,
> for an FBC-failing method.  But it adds too much complication for an
> initial proposal.
> 
> Anyway, you can't have everything. If you want minimum strategy need,
> and simplicity, then you've got to count all voted pairwise preferences
> equally.
> 
> You continued:
> 
> In a 5-way race there are 120 unique sets of preferences (151 if equal
> rankings are allowed) and any method thhat only uses 10 counters to
> determine a winner is going to mess things up somehow.
> 
> I reply:
> 
> What is a counter? Do you refer to the hiring of only 10 people to
> handcount the ballots? Nowadays a computer program would probably be
> used. But of course a computer shouldn't be used unless there are paper
> ballots too, and unless the sourcecode is available to everyone, and
> checkable by anyone. I don't know the details of how computer-counting
> could be made really secure, but most feel that it can.
> 
> Lacking secure computer counts, we could hire lots of people for the
> pairwise counting. It needn't take longer than IRV. In fact it could be
> quicker, with one team for each pairwise comparison. Quicker but more
> expensive.
> 
> But why would it mess things up if only 10 ballot-counters were hired? A
> national presidential count with lots of candidates would take a while
> then, of course.
> 
> Mike Ossipoff
> 
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