[EM] Manual Construction of Smith Set

[Forest Simmons]

That's another reason why Score Sorted Margins is so much better than
Smith//whatever or Smith,whatever.... it seamlessly elects from Smith
without the unnecessary, annoying "names dropping."

It stands on it's own two feet ... and with its own very convincing
heuristic.   It is an obvious improvement on the most used, traditional,
venerable, Single Pairwise Elimination (SPE) method that has been used in
Parliament, committees, and other deliberative assemblies, from time
immemorial, and recommended by Robert's Rules of Order since its first
publication in the 1800's.

SPE makes one pass of bubble sort through the agenda order from lowest
score to highest, without paying attention to which out-of-order pair
should have priority for rectification ... which should be the pair whose
score order is least definite:

If the scores are A(70), B(69), C(50), and the pairwise defeats are C
defeats B and B defeats A .  So which score order is more certain? A>B or
B>C ?

One uncertain score voter could change the score order to B>A, but it would
take about ten score voters to change the score order of B>C to C>B.

SSM respects this priority, while SPE ignores it, and mindlessly gives
priority to the lower swap.

That would not matter if pairwise defeat were a transitive relation, but it
is not, which is why Condorcet cycles exist.

SSM efficiently and seamlessly resolves all cycles, and ranks all of the
Smith candidates ahead of the other candidates in a finish order that obeys
strict symmetry reversal, which SPE does not.

El mié., 26 de ene. de 2022 3:52 p. m., Richard, the VoteFair guy <
electionmethods at votefair.org> escribió:

> On 1/26/2022 12:02 PM, Colin Champion wrote:
>  > ... for what it’s worth I entirely agree with you.
>  > ... Computing the Smith set is a task beyond the understanding
>  > of normal people. ...
>
> Colin, thanks for the confirmation!
>
> The topic arose on Reddit -- in r/EndFPTP -- when someone insisted that
> Smith/IRV -- was better than RCIPE (Ranked Choice Including Pairwise
> Elimination).  When I said that was too difficult to understand, he(?)
> disagreed.  I wanted to ensure there wasn't something I was overlooking
> as to how it might be easy.
>
> As Kristofer pointed out, it can be easy in most cases, but not in all
> cases.
>
> On 1/26/2022 12:02 PM, Colin Champion wrote:
>  > ... What’s worse, in my view, is that it lacks any intuitive meaning.
>  > The argument “X deserves to be elected rather than Y because X is in
>  > the Smith set and Y isn’t” will be found persuasive by about 20
> people on the planet. ...
>
> I agree!
>
> IMO the idea of improving IRV by limiting the winners to the Smith set
> is like putting expensive racing tires on an old pickup truck.
>
> Richard Fobes
> The VoteFair guy
>
>
> On 1/26/2022 12:02 PM, Colin Champion wrote:
> > Richard – for what it’s worth I entirely agree with you. Computing the
> > Smith set is a task beyond the understanding of normal people. What’s
> > worse, in my view, is that it lacks any intuitive meaning. The argument
> > “X deserves to be elected rather than Y because X is in the Smith set
> > and Y isn’t” will be found persuasive by about 20 people on the planet
> > (amongst whom I am not numbered).
> >    Colin
> ----
> Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list
> info
>
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