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

[Raul Miller <moth@debian.org>]

On Tue, Nov 28, 2000 at 05:53:39PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> But, under any reasonable interpretation I can see, A.6(2) only uses
> individual preferences to determine whether one option dominates another.
> (This matches, say, the definition of "pairwise-victory" given in 
> http://www.fortunecity.com/meltingpot/harrow/124/defn.html)

Here's A.6(2):

    2. Option A is said to Dominate option B if strictly more ballots
       prefer A to B than prefer B to A.

If it said "...option B if more ballots prefer A...", I'd agree with you.

However, it says "...if strictly more..."

As I see it, the essence of your argument is that "strictly" makes no
difference in this context.

And, the essence of my argument is that "...strictly more ballots
prefer.." forbids the inclusion of ties -- neither pairwise ties nor
circular ties.

I don't see what's so unreasonable about my interpretation.

> > However, I do understand that that's your interpretation, so I suppose
> > the question is: given that this is your interpretation, what do you
> > want to do about it?
> 
> Have it clearly and fairly handled by the vote counting process.

Ok.  I also believe that my interpretation achieves this.  Would
you have a problem with a rephrasing of A.6(2) which unambigously
expresses my interpretation?

-- 
Raul