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Re: Condorcet Voting and Supermajorities (Re: [CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT] Disambiguation of 4.1.5)



On Thu, Nov 30, 2000 at 11:41:26AM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> > > One problem if you don't have further discussion win more often than it
> > > perhaps should is as follows:
> > > Suppose you have three options on your ballot, A, B and F. A requires a
> > > 3:1 supermajority. Sincere preferences are:
> > > 	60 people order the options A, B, F
> > > 	40 people order the options B, A, F
> > > in which case A would win by dominating B 60:40 and F 100:0 (33.3:0). 

> > Since a vote for B is a vote against A, I completely disagree with
> > this assesment.

On Thu, Nov 30, 2000 at 02:00:57PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> A vote for B is *NOT* a vote against A.

If B wins, A loses.

What's your definition of a vote against A?

> A vote for B over A says "I would prefer it if Debian resolved <B>",
> not "I think it would be unacceptable if Debian resolved <A>".

If B wins, A loses.

> > After substituting meta-syntactic variables, this would read:
> 
> "Yes" is not a metasyntactic variable, however. (If it were, section
> A.3(2) would have to be read as requiring the final vote to have three
> options, and that supermajority requirements only apply to the first
> option).

Try reading A.3(3).  Also, what I said before:

> > [You might try to claim that some of these are not meta-syntactic
> > variables -- but that would be equivalent to the claim that there is no
> > 3:1 supermajority requirement for A, in this vote.]

> There are three ways of handling supermajorities under discussion, afaict:
> 
> 	* Two (N+1) votes, the latter being Y/N/F with Y requiring the
> 	  supermajority, and no supermajority requirement in the former
> 	  vote.

Agreed.

> 	* A single vote, where the pairwise preferences for A against
> 	  "Further Discussion" (only) are scaled according to A's
> 	  supermajority requirements.

F:A in A.6(7) stands for For:Against.  Not Further Discussion : Option A.

Alternatively: F:A stands for two small integers, and does not in any
way specify the notation used to label the ballot choices.

> 	* A single vote, where the pairwise preferences for A against
> 	  all other options are scaled according to A's supermajority
> 	  requirement. [0]

This is what A.3(3) specifies [given what's already said in A.3(1),
A.3(2) and A.6(7)].

> The first two of these methods can be made to have the same results in
> all cases, given a particular sentiment among the electors. The latter
> method will give different results in a number of cases.

I'm dubious.  But let's first try to agree on terminology before we
discuss this any further.

Thanks,

-- 
Raul



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