Re: Condorcet Voting and Supermajorities (Re: [CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT] Disambiguation of 4.1.5)
I'm back from vacation now...I've read the other posts, but I'm
probably not going to respond to them (too many to process all at
once...) So I'll just pick up here.
> On Tue, Dec 05, 2000 at 12:32:12AM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> > The Condorcet criterion says that if there's a single option that
> > pairwise beats every other option, it should win (assuming there's no
> > supermajority requirement, and quorum is met).
>
> That's a relatively weak criterion, all things considered.
"All things considered" just being:
-- it doesn't deal with supermajorities
-- it doesn't deal with quorum issues
-- it doesn't state what should happen if there isn't a single option
that pairwise beats every other option.
or are there other things to consider that make it weak?
The Condorcet Criterion isn't a voting method. It's a property that
voting methods may (or may not) have. It is part of the theory of
single-winner elections, which mainly concerns itself with votes where
one winner out of many procedurally equal candidates must be chosen.
Supermajority isn't considered. Neither does quorum issues.
The same goes with the Smith Criterion.
> > It's what the current A.6(2) and A.6(3) are for. (The Condorcet criterion
> > doesn't say anything about the ambiguous cases we've been talking about)
>
> I thought we'd agreed that they are to ensure that the Smith criterion
> is met (which is more specific than the Condorcet criterion).
If A.6(3) is supposed to reduce the options to the Smith set, it is
very poorly written.
A.6(4) is, in the context of A.6(2), an -exact- statement of the Condorcet Criterion.
Because of A.6(4) and A.6(2), the voting scheme we are using (in the
absence of quorum or supermajority requirements) by definition meets
the Condorcet Criterion.
> > Ignore all the procedures established in the appendices, and just
> > note that a consitutional amendment requires a `3:1 supermajority'
> > to succeed. I can only see two things this can be attempting to require:
> >
> > * For every person who wouldn't accept it as a resolution, there
> > must be three who will for it to pass.
>
> Agreed.
>
> > * For every person who would prefer some other solution, there
> > must be three who think this is the best solution possible.
>
> Agreed.
>
> > The way the N+1 style of voting behave, you're effectively requiring the
> > former.
>
> My point of view is that these two are essentially equivalent: in the
> N+1 style of voting, a person who thinks that the option isn't the best
> would vote for "further discussion".
Clarification request: "N+1 style of voting" means to first hold a series of
votes to decide a final form of the amendment, followed by a single
Y/N/F ballot?
So what you are saying is that you feel that if in the first of two
ballots, I voted ABFC, and B was determined to be the winner of the
ballot, then I should vote either of FNY or FYN on the final ballot?
If the first ballot was:
A. Grant Buddha Buck a $10,000 Debian Fellowship
B. Grant Buddha Buck a $ 1,000 Debian Fellowship
C. Grant Bill Gates a $10,000 Debian Fellowship
D. Grant Bill Gates a $ 1,000 Debian Fellowship
F. Further Discussion
and I unethically ignored the conflict of interest issue, I would most
certainly vote ABFDC. If B were the unambiguous winner of the first
ballot (under A.6(4)), you feel that in the final vote, I should vote
FYN, because I think that the $10,000 is better than the $1,000?
I think that most people would vote YNF or YFN in the final ballot if
they felt that accepting the resolution was preferable to the other
two options. I think that if there had already been N votes, most
people would be inclined to vote F last (if at all) rather than risk
having to continue the discussion.
--
Buddha Buck bmbuck@14850.com
"Just as the strength of the Internet is chaos, so the strength of our
liberty depends upon the chaos and cacophony of the unfettered speech
the First Amendment protects." -- A.L.A. v. U.S. Dept. of Justice
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