Kevin--
You suggested that there could be a method in which a majority, who have transitive strict preferences among all the candidates, could ensure that some Y won't win, by alternately voting ">" and "=" in their rankings. You said that's a silly way of voting, and that, because a silly way of voting could make Y lose, thereby compllying with WDSC's requirement, that meant, you said, that WDSC's requirement must not be reasonable.
Do you see that that doesn't make any sense?
WDSC's requirement is merely that those voters, all preferring some other particular candidate to Y, should be able to make Y lose without reversing a preference. That isn't an unreasonable requirement, nor is it a silly requirement. But then that depends on whether you want voters to be strategically forced to reverse their preferences. Some would say that the guarantee, offered by WDSC-complying methods, that those voters can achieve their goal without reversing a preference, is a meaningful and reasonable guarantee.
Of course, with some proposed methods that meet WDSC, those voters need only vote some compromise candidate equal to their favorite. Then, if the method is a rank method, maybe they could alternate "=" and ">" for their lower rankings if they want to, or they could use ">" and "=" to spell out "WDSC" in Morse code if they want to. But the fact that they could do that if they want to, as long as they vote some compromise equal to their favorite, has no bearing on the reasonableness or unreasonableness of the requirement that they not have to reverse a preference.
Now, maybe you'd like to hypothesize a method with which, under certain conditions, the _only_ way that that majority can keep some Y from winning would be for them to alternately vote "=" and ">", or to use ">" and "=" to spell out "WDSC" in Morse code. Silly? Sure. Would that be a silly method? Of course. Would that mean that the guarantee that those voters don't have to reverse a preference in order to make someone lose is not a meaningful or reasonable guarantee. No.
By the way, aside from all that, it isn't quite clear why you think it's silly to equal-rank. But, silly though equal-ranking may be, it's less silly than reversing a preference. WDSC guarantees that a majority who prefer X to Y can make Y lose without being silly to the degree of reversing a preference.
Though I consider voting system reform to be important, I don't do it with any goal about achieving any particular result or outcome. I do it just because I like to. As I said, what happens then, what someone else does or doesnt do, is not my department. Part of the fun is finding out what of entertaining opposing arguments I get.
One thing that I've been finding out is that tradition is very important to some people. It's remarkable and surprising the lengths to which some people will go, the kinds of arguments that they'll try. That's more entertaining than any episode of _Survivor_. Well, I'm fairly sure of that, though I must admit that I've never watched _Survivor_.
Mike Ossipoiff
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