[EM] Irrelevant Ballots

[C.Benham]

To avoid confusion I usually just use the term "irrelevant ballots" to 
refer to ballots that in effect don't do anything  except
change the total number of ballots.

To answer your specific question, obviously they should be irrelevant on 
who should win out of A and B but of course they support
A and B versus the rest so (even though A and B are "the clear 
frontrunners") they may not be /entirely/ irrelevant.

Chris Benham

On 11/10/2016 2:03 AM, Toby Pereira wrote:
> Thank you for the clarification. Would you also consider ballots that 
> rank/rate candidates equally to be irrelevant? For example, if A and B 
> are the clear frontrunners anyway, and a ballot top rates or equal top 
> ranks both candidates and doesn't mention any other candidates, would 
> this be an irrelevant ballot?
>
>
>     ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>     *From:* C.Benham <cbenham at adam.com.au>
>     *To:* election-methods at lists.electorama.com
>     *Sent:* Wednesday, 9 November 2016, 5:28
>     *Subject:* Re: [EM] Irrelevant Ballots
>
>     Toby,
>
>     A while ago some-one coined the "Blank Ballots Criterion" that
>     just said that the result shouldn't change if we add (or remove) some
>     "blank ballots".
>
>     But it struck me that a method that breaches this in spirit would
>     usually meet the letter of it by simply refusing to count such ballots
>     as "valid".
>
>     So I coined "Irrelevant Ballots Independence" that just said that
>     if we add some ballots that do nothing but plump for some candidate
>     with fewer above-bottom votes than any other candidate and that is
>     ignored or not voted above bottom on all the other ballots then
>     the result shouldn't change.
>
>     It is failed by Bucklin and tends to be failed by methods that use
>     arbitrary percentage thresholds of all the valid ballots as part
>     of their
>     algorithms.
>
>     Chris Benham
>
>
>     On 11/9/2016 8:20 AM, Toby Pereira wrote:
>>     I've noticed people (mainly Chris Benham I think) talking about
>>     "irrelevant ballots", and I just wanted to clear up the
>>     definition that people use. My intuitive understanding is that a
>>     ballot is irrelevant with respect to candidates A and B if it
>>     ranks/rates them equally or doesn't rank/rate them at all. So if
>>     A is elected over B then the addition or removal of any such
>>     ballots would never cause B to be elected over A.
>>
>>
>>     ----
>>     Election-Methods mailing list - seehttp://electorama.com/em  for list info
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>     ----
>     Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em
>     <http://electorama.com/em>for list info
>
>

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