[EM] Delegate cascade and proportional representation

[Raph Frank]

On Sat, Aug 23, 2008 at 5:45 PM, Michael Allan <mike at zelea.com> wrote:
> Raph Frank wrote:
>> 1) Find the candidate with the highest score that is part of a loop.
>
> Except that all candidates are formally equal.  Their inputs (votes
> received) all flood out to the same level (pool), giving them equal
> measures of assent from the voters.  Without additional information,
> there is no fair way to choose among them.

In your cyclic cycle example,
http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/theory.xht

you show one node holding more votes.

Actually, my visualisation of the method was slightly off.

I thought a vote was credited to every node along which it passes (but
couldn't credit a node more than once).

So, in that example, all on the members of the loop would hold 7 votes
and the other node would hold 1 vote.

Maybe the rule would be to break the weakest link of the strongest loop.

In that example, the links are all 6's and one 5, so the 5 link would be broken.

Ofc, there could also be a tie for that too, if there are 2 entry
points into the loop.

Breaking at the 5 link would mean that members of the loop get
priority over non-members when assigning seats.

If you had a loop of 8 and only 5 seats for that loop, I am not sure
how to manage that.

This may lead to strategic problems.  The node that is the
'entry-point' into a loop for a large number of votes has an incentive
to abstain in order to be sure of getting a seat.

This means that a better rule might be to break the link after the
member of the loop who received the most votes from outside the loop.
In the example on your page, that would break the loop after the node
on the left-top.  This is the node who benefited the loop the most and
rightly should get the first call on any seats that the loop receives.