[EM] Reply to Warren's website

[Michael Ossipoff]

Warren quoted me:

I advocate Range over Condorcet, as a public proposal. Assigning points from 
1 to 10 is already familiar to people..

I reply now:

Well, let’s say that RV is probably more winnable. But I now feel that it’s 
better to be more ambitious and ask for SSD. But, if it should turn out that 
Condorcet can’t be gotten, because it’s unfamiliar to people, or perceived 
as complicated, then yes, RV would be a good proposal. Having gotten 
agreement about RV, one could then point out that Approval is the simplest 
RV, the 0,1 RV. The easily implemented and easily voted RV is Approval. Yes, 
easily voted. We’ve done polls on EM using Approval, RV, and rank-balloting. 
Approval was by far the easiest to vote. On the other hand, due to 
peculiarities of our political system and electorate, RV might give better 
results in U.S. public elections than Approval would.

Warren‘s quote of me continues:
:.
But if it's a question of which I'd prefer if I could enact whatever 
single-winner reform I wanted, I'd choose Ranked-Pairs(wv) or the wv version 
of BeatpathWinner/CSSD. [Editor's note: these are two Condorcet methods that 
Ossipoff particularly likes.]

I reply now:

Now I prefer SSD for public elections. CSSD or BeatpathWinner (they’re 
equivalent) for organizations and committees with few voters. SSD is 
equivalent to those two when the voters are so numerous that there are no 
pair wise ties. SSD is my best recommendation for public elections.

Warren’s quote of me continues:

Why would I choose Condorcet if the enactment decision were entirely up to 
me? Because, with Condorcet(wv), the voter who feels that it's necessary to 
fully support Gore against Bush will still be fully helping Nader beat Gore. 
(End quote.)
In contrast, Ossipoff feels that in range voting, you can fully support 
Nader versus Gore, or fully support Gore versus Bush, but not both at the 
same time.

I Reply now:

Not only do I “feel” that, but it’s grossly obvious to anyone, or should be.

Warren replies:

Reply to Ossipoff: That was an appealing point by Ossipoff, although in 
fact, I suspect Ossipoff is wrong. I am not precisely sure what "fully 
supporting A versus B" means to him

I reply now:

I’ve stated on EM what I mean by fully voting X over Y. You fully vote X 
over Y, if, in the comparison between X and Y, you’re helping X all you can. 
By the comparison between X and Y, I mean, for Condorcet, the pair-wise 
vote-count for X and Y. Of course for RV it just refers to the comparison of 
the points received by X and Y.

Warren points out that Condorcet doesn’t meet the Participation Criterion. 
As I said in my other posting today, Participation isn’t about a strategy 
dilemma. It’s about an embarrassment. All methods can encounter an 
embarrassment of some kind. Of course it’s up to Warren what is important to 
him, and he isn’t wrong, whatever may be his choice about what is important 
to him. But, speaking for myself, I’m more interested in avoiding strategy 
dilemma. I’m more interested in avoiding a need for a voter to abandon his 
genuine preferences for strategic reasons. The best you can say about RV is 
that it won‘t force you to vote someone over your favorite for strategic 
reasons. I don’t want the lesser-of-2-evils problem.

When voters are strategically prevented from voting their genuine 
preferences, or forced to choose which preferences to dilute, as will happen 
in RV, democracy loses.

But if Warren has a quibble about what it means to fully vote X over Y, then 
I refer him to my criteria SFC, GSFC, and SDSC. Those criteria are met by 
SSD and other good wv Condorcet versions. Those are my main justification 
for Condorcet. RV fails all of those criteria. RV offers FBC and WDSC, but, 
for me (and choices like this are individual choices) that doesn’t even come 
close to the value of SFC, GSFC & SDSC.

Mike Ossipoff