[EM] Strategy-free criterion

[robert bristow-johnson]

> On 06/13/2024 11:20 AM EDT Markus Schulze <markus.schulze8 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>  
> Hallo,
> 
> in 1997, I proposed the following version for the
> strategy-free criterion:
> 
> *************************************************
>     "X >> Y" means, that a majority of the voters prefers
>     X to Y.
> 
>     "There is a majority beat-path from X to Y," means,
>     that X >> Y or there is a set of candidates
>     C[1], ..., C[n] with X >> C[1] >> ... >> C[n] >> Y.
> 
>     A method meets the "Generalized Majority
>     Criterion" (GMC) if and only if:
>     If there is a majority beat-path from A to B, but
>     no majority beat-path from B to A, then B must not
>     be elected.
> *************************************************

Okay, this is elegant (once the notion of a beat-path is understood).  Now, if there is a cycle, isn't there a majority beat-path from B to A?  Can the set of candidates, C[], be empty, so that it's simply B >> A?

> See:
> http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/1997-October/001570.html

Wow, I knew you were around back in the olden days, Markus.  I just didn't know it went back to the previous millennium.  And I did not know MO's participation also goes back to the 90s.  I only started in 2009 just after the Burlington IRV election.  A FairVote apologist in Burlington, Terry Bouricius (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Bouricius), told me about the EM list.  (He has recently authored a new book plugging sortition: https://democracycreative.com/The-Trouble-With-Elections )

I am grateful for your work and I still think about how to encode the Schulze method into concise legislative language.  I can do it for MinMax, sorta do it for Ranked Pairs, but decently concise legislative language in English for Schulze is elusive.  If the language appears impenetrable to policy makers, it ain't gonna get anywhere in legislation.  That's one reason I decided that "straight-ahead Condorcet" with a "completion method" is the most likely sell. 

 https://legislature.vermont.gov/Documents/2024/Docs/BILLS/H-0424/H-0424%20As%20Introduced.pdf 

That one is Condorcet-Plurality (because that was the simplest completion method), but I think next time around, I'll try to convince them to do Condorcet-TTR which is, for three significant candidates, identical to Condorcet-IRV.

--

r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj at audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

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