Condorcet methods like beatpath winner can be used to obtain a ranking of the candidates but they don't seem to be good for elections in which the goal is proportional representation. I'm curious whether people know about generalizations of beatpath winner that make sense for this purpose.
There seems to be something fundamentally problematic about this goal because the voter can't give enough information by simply ranking preferences. Suppose a voter likes candidates A > B > C. That's enough information to use for a single-winner election, but it doesn't tell us enough for a multiwinner election. Suppose that when the other voter's preferences are taken into account, the choice comes down to either getting A elected (but not B or C), or getting B and C elected (but not A). Even though the voter prefers A to B or C individually, we can't tell whether that voter would prefer A to the B+C combination. Does anyone have any pointers? Thanks. -- Andrew ---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info