Re: Condorcet Voting and Supermajorities (Re: [CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT] Disambiguation of 4.1.5)
On Mon, Nov 27, 2000 at 11:48:05AM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> 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'.
And I don't see how you can treat a circular tie as a strict preference.
A strict preference requires that you choose to keep one side of the
preference while you choose to reject the other side. As you've so
clearly argued: treating a circular tie as representing strict preference
requires that you keep all of the options, or reject all of them.
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?
Would you like to amend A.6 to make unambiguously clear that A does not
dominate B if they're both a part of a circular tie?
Would you like to amend the constitution in some other fashion?
[If so, what's your criteria for rejecting my interpretation as not
even desirable?]
> 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".
This is why I have a problem with your interpretation -- you're
claiming that "strictly" has no meaning, in the constitution.
> 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.
Well, it certainly doesn't make sense to treat the ballots in any sense
other than collectively -- after all, we're trying to determine their
collective impact, not their individual impact.
However, I guess I understand that you don't want to see it that way,
which leaves us with the question: now what?
> [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.
That would be indifference. It's true that indifference is not a strict
preference -- however, it's not a weak preference either -- it's not a
preference between C and D at all.
--
Raul
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