Another message from Mike... ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 07 Feb 2000 07:59:46 GMT From: MIKE OSSIPOFF <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Why Margins isn't as democratic or ethical as votes-against Rob-- This is my letter about why votes-against makes more sense than margins, completely aside from the matter of criterion compliance. It never occurred to me to put it this way when I was on the list. Would you forward this to EM for me? *** Here's why I claim that Blake Cretney's Margins method isn't as good as Schulze, or any other genuine Condorcet version. (The translations of Condorcet's words indicate that Condorcet judged the strength of a defeat by the number of people voting in favor of that defeat). We'd like it if there is one candidate who beats each one of the others. We of course only drop a defeat because we have to, because they're in conflict for choosing a winner. Dropping a defeat means overruling a pairwise count result voted by the people, and so it isn't done lightly. We want to minimize the number of voters whom we overrule. Since Condorcet's own wording of his proposal on which most of our Condorcet interpretations are based is an iterative process in which we iteratively drop the weakest defeat, I'll talk in terms of that procedure. It clarifies & dramatizes the issue of which way to judge defeats, when we consider which defeat to drop. If A beats B, and we drop the defeat A>B, then we're overruling the voters who won that pairwise defeat result. If we don't drop A>B, we _aren't_ overruling the voters who opposed that result by voting B over A. We aren't overruling them because they were already overruled when the votes were counted. They lost. So, if we want to minimize the number of voters whom we overrule by dropping a defeat, then we must minimize the number of people who voted in favor of the defeat that we drop. Drop the defeat that has fewest people voting for it. That's obviously what it means to overrule as few voters as possible. *** To put it differently, Blake would treat those 2 sets of votes the same, count them with the same weight: The voters who voted A over B, and the voters who voted B over A. Even though A beat B, because more voted A over B than vice-versa, and the A>B voters are the ones who won, and the B>A voters are the losers. *** Ethically & democratically, it makes much more sense to drop the defeat for whom the fewest people voted. *** Mike ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com