[EM] FBC, center squeeze, and CD

[Michael Ossipoff]

On Tue, Nov 8, 2016 at 11:25 PM, C.Benham <cbenham at adam.com.au> wrote:

> On 11/9/2016 8:35 AM, Michael Ossipoff wrote:
>
>
>
> In Benham, Woodall, ICT, & probably many or most pairwise-count methods,
> the CWs has no protection from burial, or even from innocent, non-strategic
> truncation.
>
> With wv-like strategy, truncation from one side can't take victory from
> the CWs & give it to the truncators' candidate.
>
> ...and plumping by the CWs's voters makes it impossible for burial to
> succeed. In fact, the mere threat of that plumping can deter burial.
>
>
> So to "protect"  some candidate  that some voters imagine is the sincere
> CW
>

In Burlington, IRV got repealed because it didn't "protect" the CWv.

The Burlington Republicans would have had to favorite-bury in order to
"protect" the CWs.

As for "imagine", yes it can't always be reliably-predicted who's the CWs,
That isn't a good reason to make it difficult to "protect" the expected or
evident CWs.

When you let the CWv lose, you have an angry majority after the election,
as exemplified in Burlilngton. For many people, the CWs is the best that
they can get, and that's a reason to make it easy to "protect" the expected
or evident CWs.

 You wrote:

 (when perhaps there is no sincere CW or some other candidate
is the sincere CW) you want to have a "defensive truncation" strategy
available* inside* a method with a very strong random-fill incentive?

(endquote)

As a deterence against burial, sure.

I admit that it's difficult to improve on Approval, and that such
improvement is usually/mostly illusory. But, as I've said, organizations,
activists, and many progressive parties want rankings. And ranking might
soften or partly avoid the voting-errors of overcompromisers & rival
parties.

Polls with Approval & Score balloting showed voters doing better with Score
than with Approval. Maybe rankings, too, would soften voting-errors.

You wrote:

And you should add (and stress) that it needs plumping by *all  *of the
"CWs voters to make it impossible for burial to succeed", and not ,say,
merely 93% of them (with the other 7% sincerely fully ranking):

(endquote)

In your example below, I find nothing wrong with B winning. The example has
no CWv. As you yourself have said, the voting-system can't read the voters'
minds.

After the election, the important thing about electing the CW is to avoid
having an angry majority. In your example, the winner was the candidate
over whom the fewest voters preferred someone else. That isn't a bad result.

You speculate that A was the CWs in the example.

If A was the CWs, then plumping by even 100% of the A voters wouldn't have
foiled the burial by the B voters.

Your "CW" (Candidate A) is a peculiarly unsupported CWs.

"Protecting" such a CWs wasn't what wv was proposed, offered & advocated
for.

When I first proposed wv in the late '80s, I showed its "protection" of a
middle CWs who is supported from both sides. I never claimed that it could
"protect" a CWs who is entirely unsupported by preferrers of any other
candidate. "Protection" of an entirely outside-unsupported CWs was never
the intended purpose of wv.

You "CWs" is entirely unsupported by preferrers of any other candidate.

You said that maybe the B voters are indifferent between A & C (...that
their sincere preferences are "B".), or that maybe their sincere 2nd choice
is A.

In the former scenario, we have 3 factions with no support for anyone other
than their favorite.

In the 2nd scenario, the B voters, preferring A as their 2nd choice,
reverse that preference to bury B.   ...and the C voters, few in number,
give no support to A. In both scenarios, A isn't supported by the
preferrers of any other candidate.

So, is that the big-bad bad-example for MDDTR & wv?

43: A
03: A>B
44: B>C  (sincere may be B or B>A)
10: C

100 ballots.  C>A 54-46,   A>B 46-44,  B>C 47-10.   Top Ratings A46 > B44 >
C10.   Approvals: C54 > A46 > B44.

Here MDDTR  (like MDDTA and WV and Margins and MMPO and Jameson's latest
"holy grail")  all elect the possibly burying voters' favourite, B.

(endquote)

"Possiblely burying". The voting system needn't worry about "possibly". As
I said, you've sometimes pointed out that the voting system can't read
voters' minds. What the voting-system is given, in your example, is the
fact that there's no CWv, and that B is the candidate to whom fewest voters
prefer someone else. The election of B will result, after the election, in
the least-opposed winner.

Somehow the rest of your post got deleted. I'll reply to it later.

Michael Ossipoff
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