[EM] An objection that I hadn't spelled-out before

[Michael Ossipoff]

A votes-only FARCS approach would completely obscure the purpose and benefit 
of the majority defensive strategy criteria, thereby defeating their 
purpose.

A criterion would be of little use if its wording didn’t express its 
important guarantees.

That was the purpose of this posting, but I might as well add this:

By the way, Sincere Favorite could be worded to not mention ranking, and 
therefore doesn't need FARCS.  SF is oddly mis-named, given its votes-only 
purpose.  It's useful as an approximation test for expectation FBC, easier 
to meet and easier to test for. Probably any expectation FBC failure that 
isn't an SF failure isn't a failure that matters. If someone needs perfect 
predictive knowledge in order to benefit from favorite-burial, then it 
doesn't seem a problem. Ignorant favorite-burial is the problem.

SF ia an approximation to expectation FBC,  and sometimes a useful one. But 
SF certainly can’t replace expectation FBC. For one thing, SF doesn’t apply 
to Plurality, IRV, or any other method that doesn’t allow two candidates to 
be voted over all the others,  without voting either of those two over the 
other.

Maybe there’s some FARCSish way to make SF apply to such methods, but you 
know what I say about FARCS.

Another problem is that increasing the probability that one of your 
top-voted two candidates will win is not always the same as increasing your 
expectation.

Mike Ossipoff