[Election-Methods] [english 95%] Re: [english 94%] Re: method design challenge +new method AMP

Jobst Heitzig heitzig-j at web.de
Fri May 9 03:39:25 PDT 2008


Dear Juho,

you wrote:

> (Roughly the question is if one wants to  
> give Stalin and other unwanted fellows a small probability to become  
> elected or a zero probability.)

I don't think this is the point. To the contrary, bringing up such examples is quite misleading, I think, because extreme options are not at all a problem of non-deterministic methods only. *No* election or decision method should be applied without first checking the feasibility of options with respect to certain basic requirements. This sorting out the "constitutional" options cannot be subject to a group decision process itself since often the "unconstitutional" options have broad support (Hitler is only the most extreme example for this). 

In other words, without such a feasibility check *before* deciding, also majoritarian methods can produce a very bad outcome (think of Rwanda...).

Yours, Jobst
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