Talk:Strategic nomination

Confusion about a specific paragraph
About the profile * 40 voters preferring candidate A to B to C * 35 voters preferring candidate B to C to A * 25 voters preferring candidate C to A to B there is the phrase: "With the above preferences and whatever candidate an election method chooses as a winner, another candidate can always secure a majority of votes against that winner by removing the third candidate."

And my calculation shows that if A is the winner chosen by an election method then B cannot secure a majority of votes against A by removing C from the election, because that would create the profile * 40 voters preferring candidate A to B * 35 voters preferring candidate B to A * 25 voters preferring candidate A to B Thus even more voters in favour of A.

I guess this is either my confusion or the confusion of the paragraph's author. Please comment. --Konrad (talk) 14:39, 21 January 2010 (UTC)


 * You're correct that B cannot gain a majority, but C can (C would have a 60:40 majority in a direct runoff). By "another candidate", the phrase you quoted doesn't mean either candidate can gain a majority, but rather that at least one can. 66.215.156.89 (talk) 04:40, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Discussion about ICC criterion in mathematical models and real life voting
I challenge the validity of the Independence of Clones criteria: I have not found any mathematical definition of a clone, nor have I found a way to objectively determine what a clone is and isn't.  I can say that clones are a special case of a correlated pair, but that still is not a precise definition. I would like to promote a discussion on this topic.--Fahrenheit451 18:25, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I would like to remove all references to this independence of clones in different voting method articles if no one can define exactly what a clone is and prove their existence. It looks like a clever piece of fiction so far.--Fahrenheit451 20:55, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I edited this article on the independence of clones portion only. It was a real mess. Like editing an article about the tooth fairy that no one has ever seen, but a few like to discuss as if such a person does exit.--Fahrenheit451 23:06, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The independence of clones criterion is a well-established criterion. The definition given on the page may have been unclear to you, but it is not "defective". The page defines clones perfectly precisely:

A clone is an identical copy of something. Now Tideman wants us to believe that a clone is this definition? That's a bunch of crap.--Fahrenheit451 20:19, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * those candidates where every voter ranks them the same relative to every other candidate

Ridiculous! In an election with a small body of voters, that could easily be coincidence and with a large body of voters, show me where it has ever occured. --Fahrenheit451 20:19, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Your "correlated pairs" are a straw man and have nothing to do with it. A set of candidates are clones if they are ranked adjacent or tied to each other on every ballot. A candidate is independent of clones if and only if changing the size of a set of clones can never change the outcome of the election. That's mathematically precise.

That's no straw man. I attempted to make some sort of sense of the this icc nonsense. That's nothing but a vague notion, and like the tooth fairy, there is no evidence for it at all. --Fahrenheit451 20:19, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Fine, show me where that happens in the real world.--Fahrenheit451 20:19, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Your complaint seems to be that clone candidates don't exist in real life. But you can't rigorously define real-life voting behavior, so clones are used as a model. I emphasize again: clones that are rigorous and well-defined, unlike "correlated pairs", and your complaint that they are not well-defined is based on a fallacy.

That's just a straw man. You can precisely define real life voting criteria and it is observable in the real world. This icc crap cannot even be demonstrated. Are thunderstorms the result of angels who are bowling? There's a model to explain phenomena. I don't buy this icc stuff. Political candidates strive to differentiate themselves from their opponents. Parties have platforms that differentiate them from other parties. So where are the effing clones? What a bunch of crap that is! You really believe Tideman's nonsense?--Fahrenheit451 20:19, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I would appreciate if you would restore the links to ICC that you deleted, because I'd rather not have to hunt them down, and you were unjustified in deleting them.

RSpeer 05:52, Jun 7, 2005 (UTC)

I will not knowingly put false information on wikipedia. I will continue to remove it.--Fahrenheit451 20:19, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Rspeer, tell me. Can you have teaming and crowding without the candidates being "clones"? Can teaming and crowding exist as real world concepts seperate from the notion of "clones"?--Fahrenheit451 21:29, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Independence of clones is mathematically well-defined. You are correct in saying that perfect clone sets are unlikely to occur in public elections. I have left that statement in the article in my last edit, because it is true and worth knowing about. However, the criterion is still useful for analytical purposes. Also, methods failing clone independence are more likely to respond irregularly to the addition or subtraction of candidates who are close to being clones of other candidates. Independence of clones is a criterion that many students of voting theory find to be significant. Thus, I see no reason to delete it. If you find the criterion unimportant, that's fine, but there is no need to impose that judgement on all wikipedia readers new to the topic. Remember, Wikipedia works on the basis of consensus. If there is wide agreement that ICC is at least worth considering as a voting systems criterion (which there is), then it should be given a page here, and it should be listed among the criteria passed and failed by the various tally methods. If all wikipedia editors made a point of deleting criteria that they didn't find useful, there would be few to zero criteria left in the encyclopedia. Please don't be so contentious in your editing. In this instance, you seem to be editing before discussing, rather than the other way around. If you are having trouble understanding why people find merit in the ICC, I suggest that you discuss before editing. In addition to discussing on wikipedia, I invite you to discuss these issues on the electorama mailing list. Go ahead and make an anti-ICC argument there, and see what kind of replies you get. That should be more productive and less antagonistic than the current pattern of "edit wars" here on wikipedia.Hermitage 04:52, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Propose to remove npov tag
I put the npov tag here when F451 added comments about ICC being "flawed" and so on to the article content. That's not there anymore, and the article content seems to be fairly stable now (despite that F451 disagrees with it). Do we have consensus to remove the npov tag? RSpeer 13:47, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)

I agree that F451's earlier edit was insufficiently neutral. I believe that the page as written, while it can still use some improving, is sufficiently neutral. Hence, I removed the tag. I created categories, which I believe make the article more clear. I'd like to hear dissenting opinions on that if there are any. It seemed confusing to straddle the defn of ICC around the three defns of vote splitting et al... I'd rather not tie those three so closely to ICC.

I wrote "The existence of a clone set in a public election is improbable as it only takes one voter to break up a clone set." Perhaps this accomodates some of F451's concerns. I might be open to adding another sentence here, e.g. "As a result of this fact, some argue that the ICC has a rather limited range of applications." Heck, I think that I'll add this, and if anyone disagrees, they can take it off.

At some point, I'd also like to explore the issue of the degree of ICC failure. For example, Borda and Smith//minimax both fail ICC, but I believe that Borda's ICC failure is much more severe. I'd like to find a way to quantify ICC failure, or at least to arrange it into various degrees. Perhaps a good topic for the EM list. Hermitage 00:05, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

That would be a rather useless project considering no clone candidates have ever been identified. I think a far more worthwhile project is to prove that "clones" really do affect Smith and Borda. The ICC criteria remains nothing but Junk Science for candidates until someone can prove otherwise.--Fahrenheit451 18:30, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

You can prove that clones affect Borda using paper and pencil. Throwing out ICC amounts to denying that strategic nomination could even occur. I would love to see a source that makes such a claim. KVenzke 15:36, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)

Paper and pencil works for a proposal that is a fixed creation. I would agree that proposals can be cloned. But candidates are not. There are no clone candidates. Such a notion is unreal and absurd. Strategic nomination can exist and has existed before Tideman's ever invented his "clone" idea.--Fahrenheit451 17:24, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * The definition of clones -- and, in fact, all the rest of voting theory -- doesn't care whether you're voting for people or referenda. Is this where the misunderstanding comes from? RSpeer 19:46, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)

Proposals and people are entirely different bodies of data. One cannot always deal with them in the same manner. Again, one cannot have human clone candidates, but one can have human candidates that correlate in tallies. That is a different matter and "clones" is a lousy choice for a description.--Fahrenheit451 21:23, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

By the way, Fahrenheit put this in the article earlier: No mathematical definition of clones has ever been asserted, so this criterion is not well-defined. Is this a lie, or a colossal misunderstanding? You can find a definition of ICC in, for instance, Markus Schulze, "A New Monotonic and Clone-Independent Single-Winner Election Method," Voting Matters issue 17, Oct 2003, which is available under Schulze method. KVenzke 15:45, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)

The definition really pertains to correlated pairs and not "clones". Please show me a clone candidate in real life. They do not exist. Tideman misnamed a correlated pair as a clone. And that is shoddy scholarship. The term is a gross misnomer and should not be used. So, no, a mathematical definition of a clone has not been offered, but rather a misnamed correlated pair.--Fahrenheit451 17:24, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It sounds like you call a "correlated pair" what Tideman calls a pair of clones. (I'm pretty sure Tideman doesn't use the phrase "a clone" like you do, but only talks about sets of clones.) Since Tideman wrote the paper, we should use his terminology, not yours. RSpeer 19:46, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)

You can use whatever you want, it is just a gross misnomer and a very deceptive one at that.--Fahrenheit451 21:23, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It is not the job of Wikipedia to invent/find the right words for something. If it's called clone in literature, that's how we should call it in Wikipedia - even if the name is not perfect. --Konrad (talk) 14:39, 21 January 2010 (UTC)