some questions

[wbreeze]

thank you for this specification. i like the use of > and =. here are a couple of questions.

what happens if implicit is false?

in what methods does weight have a different effect than number of votes? how is it different?

[julien-boudry]

Hi @wbreeze ,

What happens if implicit is false?

For candidates A;B;C;D
For a Vote A > B

If implicit is true (default), the vote must be interpreted as:
A > B > C = D
So the pairwise matrix between A and D will result in a strength of 1.

If not, the vote must be interpreted as:
A > B
So the pairwise matrix between A and D will result in a strength of 0.

This can have an effect on some voting methods.

In what methods does weight have a different effect than a number of votes? how is it different?

Normally, that should not have any effect on the final result. It's just an expression useful for representing elections with weighted electors (indirect election, shareholder votes...).

Also, libraries ingesting this format can act differently (without effect on the result). For example, the Condorcet program will load in memory each vote if you use the quantifier (allowing manipulations later) but will load only one vote if you use the weight.
So weight can be faster and lighter.