Dear Mike Ossipoff, you wrote (26 Aug 2003): > Please read the posting that you're replying to. I didn't say > in that posting that Nurmi said that the compromising voters > were "criminal", "cheating", "shameful" or "dishonest". Neither > did I say that you said that compromising voters were "criminal", > "cheating", "shameful" or "dishonest".
You did. You wrote (23 Aug 2003): > To Markus's authors, and therefore to Markus, the important thing > about strategy is that someone is cheating the voting system by > voting insincerely. So if you have to give up your hopes of voting > for Nader, in order to elect a Democrat to keep a Republican from > winnilng, then shame on you :-) You're cheating the voting system > by votinlg insincerely, and you must be prevented from getting > away with your dishonesty. But is that really the problem, or is > that just what the problem is from the viewpoint of Nurmi, and, > therefore, of Markus? No, I'd say, and most would agree, that the > real problem there is that you're stratgegically forced to bury > your favorite. You're the victim, not the criminal. That's the > difference between Markus and his Nurmi, and the rest of us. ****** You wrote (26 Aug 2003): > You said that when I define defensive strategy in terms of the CW, > then it's a presumption of mine that non-Condorcet methods are > lousy methods. Then, by "Condorcet methods", you must mean > Condorcet Criterion methods, a class of methods that includes much > more than just Condorcet's method. But, then again, I wouldn't > want to try to guess what you mean, and I sure don't want to keep > debating it. If I misguessed what you meant, let's not have that > be an issue. One wording of Condorcet's Criterion is that if > there's a CW, and people vote sincerely, the CW should win. So > when you said that my definition mentioning the protection of > a CW's win means that non-Condorcet methods are lousy, it's > reasonable to guess that, by "Condorcet methods", you mean > methods that meet the Condorcet Criterion. We both know that Condorcet has proposed 3 different methods. Therefore, there is no unique "Condorcet's method." Proposal 1: > To compare just 20 candidates two by two, we must examine > the votes on 190 propositions, and for 40 candidates, on 780 > propositons. Besides, this will often give us an unsatisfactory > result; it may be that no candidate is considered by the > plurality to be better than all the others, and then we would > have to prefer the candidate who is just considered better > than a larger number; and when several were considered better > than the same number of candidates, we would have to choose > the candidate who was either considered better by the greatest > plurality, or worst by the smallest plurality. Proposal 2: > From the considerations we have just made we get the general > rule that whenever we have to choose we have to take successively > those propositions that have a plurality - beginning with those > that have the largest - and to pronounce the result as soon as > these first propositions create one. Proposal 3: > Create an opinion of those n*(n-1)/2 propositions that win > most of the votes. If this opinion is one of the n! possible > then consider as elected that subject to which this opinion > agrees with its preference. If this opinion is one of the > (2^(n*(n-1)/2))-(n!) impossible opinions then eliminate of this > impossible opinion successively those propositions that have > a smaller plurality and accept the resulting opinion of the > remaining propositions. Markus Schulze ---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
