On Thu, Nov 30, 2000 at 11:41:26AM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: > > > One problem if you don't have further discussion win more often than it > > > perhaps should is as follows: > > > Suppose you have three options on your ballot, A, B and F. A requires a > > > 3:1 supermajority. Sincere preferences are: > > > 60 people order the options A, B, F > > > 40 people order the options B, A, F > > > in which case A would win by dominating B 60:40 and F 100:0 (33.3:0).
> > Since a vote for B is a vote against A, I completely disagree with > > this assesment. On Thu, Nov 30, 2000 at 02:00:57PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: > A vote for B is *NOT* a vote against A. If B wins, A loses. What's your definition of a vote against A? > A vote for B over A says "I would prefer it if Debian resolved <B>", > not "I think it would be unacceptable if Debian resolved <A>". If B wins, A loses. > > After substituting meta-syntactic variables, this would read: > > "Yes" is not a metasyntactic variable, however. (If it were, section > A.3(2) would have to be read as requiring the final vote to have three > options, and that supermajority requirements only apply to the first > option). Try reading A.3(3). Also, what I said before: > > [You might try to claim that some of these are not meta-syntactic > > variables -- but that would be equivalent to the claim that there is no > > 3:1 supermajority requirement for A, in this vote.] > There are three ways of handling supermajorities under discussion, afaict: > > * Two (N+1) votes, the latter being Y/N/F with Y requiring the > supermajority, and no supermajority requirement in the former > vote. Agreed. > * A single vote, where the pairwise preferences for A against > "Further Discussion" (only) are scaled according to A's > supermajority requirements. F:A in A.6(7) stands for For:Against. Not Further Discussion : Option A. Alternatively: F:A stands for two small integers, and does not in any way specify the notation used to label the ballot choices. > * A single vote, where the pairwise preferences for A against > all other options are scaled according to A's supermajority > requirement. [0] This is what A.3(3) specifies [given what's already said in A.3(1), A.3(2) and A.6(7)]. > The first two of these methods can be made to have the same results in > all cases, given a particular sentiment among the electors. The latter > method will give different results in a number of cases. I'm dubious. But let's first try to agree on terminology before we discuss this any further. Thanks, -- Raul