Juho wrote:
Let's say that there are three different criteria that an election
method should meet. They are related to three different strategic voting
related problems. As in the world of security also election methods are
as vulnerable to strategic voting as their weakest link. In this
situation there may be a solution that almost meets all the three
criteria but does not meet any of them fully. That solution is often
(but not always) the best solution.
So, there are patterns where a good method should meet only a strict
subset of the requirements that some competing methods meet. One may
thus improve a method by making it incompatible to some (good) criterion
that it earlier met. The point is that compatibility with various
criteria should often not be an on/off comparison but a richer analysis
where also partial and almost complete compatibilities are counted.
This seems to be an issue of the criteria being too demanding. Consider,
for instance, independence from covered candidates. I think Forest
Simmons said (in private correspondence) that IFCC implies nonmonotonicity.
If one considers monotonicity important, but also would like to have the
method be independent of as many types of non-winning candidates as
possible, the natural next thing to do is to ask: how strong can we make
this independence criterion and still satisfy monotonicity?
Similarly for your own situation; say that Smith compliance breaks
something else you want. Then you can try to find out what that thing
that you want is, and afterward attempt to find the closest thing to
Smith compliance that doesn't break it.
(For the record, I think Smith compliance is a good thing, and that
perhaps one should go even further - thus my interest in uncovered set
methods, IPDA, etc.)
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