[EM] Remember Toby

[Kevin Venzke]

Hi Juho,

--- En date de : Sam 28.5.11, Juho Laatu <juho4880 at yahoo.co.uk> a écrit :
> > Margins elects A here:
> > 35 A>B
> > 25 B
> > 40 C
> > 
> > Is this going to be defensible when this method is
> proposed? Can you
> > argue a case for A without mindreading off of the
> blank areas of the 
> > ballots?
> 
> I guess the common assumption is that the unranked
> candidates are considered to be tied at the last position.
> So, vote "B" should be read "B>A=C".
> 
> (The intended meaning of "B" and "B>A=C" is thus the
> same by default. Some methods may however have an implicit
> "approval" cutoff at the end of the explicitly ranked
> candidates. In that case vote "B" should be interpreted "B |
> A=C" and "B>A=C" should be interpreted "B>A=C |", but
> I consider that to be a special case. If the voter has some
> preference between A and C (and she wants to express it),
> then the voter should mark that in the ballot, since
> otherwise there is no other sensible interpretation but that
> A and C should be treated as equal. If there are so many
> potential winners in the election that one can not expect
> all voters to rank all potential winners, then we may lose
> some of the information that the voters wanted to give. I'm
> not sure if I answered properly to the mindreading point
> here but those were my thoughts anyway.)

The mindreading point is that you are having to say "if the voters
wanted to say something they could have said it." I'm not sure this will
be persuasive because you can't offer an assurance that those voters
could vote that way without risking something. This is why I suggest that
you had better force voters to rank everyone in a margins method.

In WV A and C will be considered as equal, too - it just won't count
that voter as a schizophrenic who always feels 50% cheated no matter what
happens between the two.

Kevin