On Sun, Nov 26, 2000 at 11:44:40AM -0500, Raul Miller wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 27, 2000 at 02:20:04AM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> > Not helped by me making up my own terminology now and then, by the looks.
> > What I've been randomly calling the "schwartz" set, is actually meant
> > to be called the Smith set, and the Smith condition is that whoever wins
> > the vote should be a member of the Smith set.
> > The definitions link from http://www.fortunecity.com/meltingpot/harrow/124/
> > defines what I've been calling "circular ties" as cycles.
> Looks fine. I'll assert that the constitution's concept of "Dominates"
> is intended to exclude every vote which is not in the smith set.
Which would make it work, but it's not what it says...
> An individual strictly prefers one option to another if and only
> if that individual accepts one side of a tradeoff and rejects the
> other side.
> -- http://www.src.uchicago.edu/depts/polsci/research/american/hansen96.htm
Sure. An individual vote, that says "1: B, 2: A, 3: F", strictly prefers
B to A, B to F, and A to F. I can agree with that. [0]
And there's no strict cumulative preference expressed in the 90 votes:
35 x ABF, 30 x BFA, 25 x FAB
.
But I still don't see how you can read that into the constitution, which
simply talks about `strictly more ballots [preferring] A to B'. It seems
completely straightforward to read that as meaning `count the number of
individual ballots which prefer A to B, count the number that prefer B
to A, and compare them. if one's strictly greater than (ie, not equal to)
the other, that one dominates the other'.
Even if you change that to "more ballots strictly prefer A to B", you
still end up with the same thing. Ditto "strictly more ballots strictly
prefer A to B". Ditto "more ballots prefer A to B".
It doesn't say "if the ballots collectively express a strict preference
for A over B" or something similar, which might be able to be reasonably
interpreted how you seem to want to.
Cheers,
aj
[0] Oh, and I should add that, aiui, the only way to not express a strict
preference between two options on our ballots is to vote for, say:
ABF
when the options are ABCDF, say. Which, aiui, is treated as A is
prefered to B, B to F, A to F, and each of A,B,F to each of C,D, but
no preference is expressed between C and D.
--
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred.
``Thanks to all avid pokers out there''
-- linux.conf.au, 17-20 January 2001
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