On Mon, Nov 27, 2000 at 11:48:05AM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: > But I still don't see how you can read that into the constitution, which > simply talks about `strictly more ballots [preferring] A to B'. It seems > completely straightforward to read that as meaning `count the number of > individual ballots which prefer A to B, count the number that prefer B > to A, and compare them. if one's strictly greater than (ie, not equal to) > the other, that one dominates the other'.
And I don't see how you can treat a circular tie as a strict preference. A strict preference requires that you choose to keep one side of the preference while you choose to reject the other side. As you've so clearly argued: treating a circular tie as representing strict preference requires that you keep all of the options, or reject all of them. However, I do understand that that's your interpretation, so I suppose the question is: given that this is your interpretation, what do you want to do about it? Would you like to amend A.6 to make unambiguously clear that A does not dominate B if they're both a part of a circular tie? Would you like to amend the constitution in some other fashion? [If so, what's your criteria for rejecting my interpretation as not even desirable?] > Even if you change that to "more ballots strictly prefer A to B", you > still end up with the same thing. Ditto "strictly more ballots strictly > prefer A to B". Ditto "more ballots prefer A to B". This is why I have a problem with your interpretation -- you're claiming that "strictly" has no meaning, in the constitution. > It doesn't say "if the ballots collectively express a strict > preference for A over B" or something similar, which might be able to > be reasonably interpreted how you seem to want to. Well, it certainly doesn't make sense to treat the ballots in any sense other than collectively -- after all, we're trying to determine their collective impact, not their individual impact. However, I guess I understand that you don't want to see it that way, which leaves us with the question: now what? > [0] Oh, and I should add that, aiui, the only way to not express a strict > preference between two options on our ballots is to vote for, say: > ABF > when the options are ABCDF, say. Which, aiui, is treated as A is > prefered to B, B to F, A to F, and each of A,B,F to each of C,D, but > no preference is expressed between C and D. That would be indifference. It's true that indifference is not a strict preference -- however, it's not a weak preference either -- it's not a preference between C and D at all. -- Raul
