A votes-only FARCS approach would completely obscure the purpose and benefit
of the majority defensive strategy criteria, thereby defeating their
purpose.
A criterion would be of little use if its wording didnt express its
important guarantees.
That was the purpose of this posting, but I might as well add this:
By the way, Sincere Favorite could be worded to not mention ranking, and
therefore doesn't need FARCS. SF is oddly mis-named, given its votes-only
purpose. It's useful as an approximation test for expectation FBC, easier
to meet and easier to test for. Probably any expectation FBC failure that
isn't an SF failure isn't a failure that matters. If someone needs perfect
predictive knowledge in order to benefit from favorite-burial, then it
doesn't seem a problem. Ignorant favorite-burial is the problem.
SF ia an approximation to expectation FBC, and sometimes a useful one. But
SF certainly cant replace expectation FBC. For one thing, SF doesnt apply
to Plurality, IRV, or any other method that doesnt allow two candidates to
be voted over all the others, without voting either of those two over the
other.
Maybe theres some FARCSish way to make SF apply to such methods, but you
know what I say about FARCS.
Another problem is that increasing the probability that one of your
top-voted two candidates will win is not always the same as increasing your
expectation.
Mike Ossipoff
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