Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result

[Kurt Roeckx <kurt@roeckx.be>]

On Sun, Apr 18, 2021 at 07:17:18PM +0100, Neil McGovern wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 18, 2021 at 06:58:49PM +0100, Barak A. Pearlmutter wrote:
> > If the winning option in an election is part of a preference cycle,
> > then it (by definition) has the property that there exists some other
> > option that a majority of the voters preferred. In some elections that
> > is unavoidable: we need to pick one DPL, and if they're in a cycle so
> > be it; if there's a tie we can just toss a coin. But in others, like
> > the RMS GR, it seems like it would be a rather bad property and we'd
> > be better off treating it as FD and trying again later.
> > 
> 
> For info, we use cloneproof Schwartz sequential dropping to resolve
> these ties. The simple version is that we work out the cycle, and then
> drop the lowest margin, in this case the 1, so "Debian will not issue a
> pubilc statement" would still win. 
> 
> A full description is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method

We drop the weakest defeat, not margin. My understanding is that
the weakest defeat is the one with the lowest number for the first
value in the defeats below (137, 139, ...)

If the assume option 4 beats option 7 instead of the other way
around, as far as I know, we would end up with the following defeats
being removed:

  Option 2 defeats Option 1 by ( 137 -  113) =   24 votes.

Which doesn't drop an option from the Schwartz set

  Option 1 defeats Option 3 by ( 139 -  131) =    8 votes.

Which has as effect that option 1 is no longer in the Schwartz set

  Option 3 defeats Option 4 by ( 150 -  140) =   10 votes.

Which has as effect that option 3 is no longer in the Schwartz set

  Option 2 defeats Option 4 by ( 165 -  132) =   33 votes.

Which leaves only option 4 in the Schwartz set.


Note that the following defeat is not removed in the sequence
above:
  Option 4 defeats Option 1 by ( 156 -  146) =   10 votes.

Since at that time option 1 is no longer in the Schwartz set,
and so that defeat is no longer relevant.


Kurt