On Sat, Dec 07, 2002 at 12:12:48PM -0500, Raul Miller wrote: > I'm critiquing the axiom, not the example. By his rules some elections > with quorums do not have a democratic outcome. That's not what's important: by his rules some elections that _meet_ quorum don't have a "democratic" outcome. The quorum issue's irrelevant. > > In more detail, and multiplied, the example is: > > D defeats A by 60:50 (20:50, but multiplied by 3:1 > > supermajority requirement) > > A defeats B by 60:10 > > B defeats D by 50:20 > > ...and the question is which defeat to eliminate: B v D because it's > > weaker, or A v B, because A can never win anyway. Given that A can't > > possibly win by assumption (it failed its supermajority requirement), > > I'm not seeing why it's not sensible to say "well, most people would > > rather `B' than further discussion, so let's go with `B'". > The issue here is the impact of transitive defeats. Should options > whith supermajority requirements have their votes scaled with respect > to options in general or only with respect to the default option? Well, you're applying transitivity to "D defeats A" -- but remember, D *didn't* actually defeat A -- most people actually preferred A to D. Is it really fair to extend that "false-defeat" to let D defeat B as well, in direct contradiction to what the voters actually said? > > Which is to say that "if option X doesn't defeat the default option by > > its supermajority requirement, it is ignored" seems to be fairer than > > considering defeats by the default option as especially strong. > Define "fairer" -- the definition of "fair" is the crux of this issue. That's easy: most in line with what the voters actually want. Cheers, aj -- Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/> I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred. ``If you don't do it now, you'll be one year older when you do.''
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