People are likely to note that I will often apologise in advance for my ideas, as experience shows that, 24-48 hours later, I will suddenly see why I am mistaken. On occasion I'm not, and that's when I tend to do decent research. I provide this disclaimer now because otherwise I'll probably preface every mail with "I'm probably wrong, but" and that gets wearing after a while.
It struck me this evening that surely the participation criterion is just a rather sharp, clear-cut case of the consistency criterion. With consistency we have set 1 and set 2, both of whom declare A as the winner, and then the amalgamated set that will declare A as the winner if consistency is satisfied. With participation we have set 1 who declared A as the winner, and then a newly-discovered ballot box, or 3 extra people who chose to vote, all of whom ranked A first, who are identical to the previous set 2. So any method that fails consistency is surely also going to fail participation, so it's no great surprise that Condorcet methods fail participation. Where's the error in my logic? Diana. ---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
