Clearly there has been a lack of clarity in this thread. While others
may have made the mess you joined in, seems like you might have stated
your objections more clearly.
From "IRV ballot pile" and previous discussion of such piles, the
subject is IRV, a method that has rules.
Then there was a post that assumed Condorcet, since the description of
what happened fitted Condorcet rules, but that post said nothing about
switching rules.
Then you objected. Per the above you had cause, but your words about
"voters' minds" led to continuing trouble.
On Feb 15, 2010, at 11:35 AM, Kathy Dopp wrote:
On Sun, Feb 14, 2010 at 7:46 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax
<[email protected]> wrote:
I seem to be one of the few people on this list who recognizes
that I
don't read voters' minds and cannot convert one vote-type to another
for voters.
Kathy, there was no reading of voter's minds. What was expressed
was the
votes themselves. Not the voter's internal, unexpressed preferences.
He was right about minds - the problem was ambiguity as to what rules
applied - a detail that neither of you pointed at.
For example, in the above example, by:
35:A
Some voters if they chose to rank further might have meant:
A>B=C
This is what they DID mean in Condorcet, assuming exactly three
candidates. Adding D, similar thinking would lead to A>B=C=D while
A>B=C>D would mean the same as A>B=C.
Clearly we are not in IRV, which does not use "=".
or they might have wanted:
A>C>B
or
A>B>C
Whether they "wanted" that or not, they did not vote that. It's like
Plurality, with three candidates, A, B, and C:
35:A
is exactly the same as
35:A>B=C.
Except that this latter, while implied in Plurality, cannot be
expressed that way in Plurality.
It most certainly is **not** the same.
Again if individual **voters** are allowed to describe what they
really meant, the voters could have meant any of the following if they
were forced to fully rank and I would bet that it would be a
freakishly rare occurence for all voters to agree with your
interpretation when voters could have ranked any of the following ways
if forced to fully rank:
A>B=C
or they might have wanted:
A>C>B
or
A>B>C
When someone votes simply
A
What they really mean is A over all other candidates running. I.e.
voters mean
A> B and A> C and A>D etc. which may *not* certainly be the same
thing at all as
A>B=C=D in the voters' minds.
It changes the results, depending on the counting method if you assume
that the voter meant > 35:A>B=C. rather than one of the other
possibilities that can translate the voters' true meaning of A> B and
A> C and A>D etc. that may've been the voter's choices if they were
forced to fully rank.
I doubt that all voters understand how you are going to define their
ballots, out of all the possible ways, in cases of voters not fully
ranking.
This seems to be yet another case of removing voters' rights to decide
for them what they meant in some methods of counting RCVs.
Kathy
----
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
