Re: [EM] Advocacy of Kemeny's method

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Steve Eppley wrote: Mike R wrote: Steven B wrote: Does this group, or anyone here, advocate Kemeny's method? I personally like it the best of all the methods I've seen, except for the "NP-hard" part. I'll advocate it without reservation when quantum computers become available. :) The obvious question is, why prefer Kemeny's method? What criteria does it satisfy that other methods fail that are more important than the criteria other methods satisfy that Kemeny fails? I like Kemeny-Young is because it has many of what I consider "must have" voting characteristics (Condorcet and Extended Condorcet, especially), plus it removes voting cycles, is resistant to voting manipulation, and it orders all of the candidates (useful when more than one candidate can win or when an elected candidate cannot serve). Of course, like any voting method there are ways to get illogical outcomes and it can ignore ballot orders that are "illogical" compared to the majority (this is how it resists manipulation, so it's a mixed blessing/curse), and it is extremely difficult to compute for many voters/candidates. According to http://condorcet.org/emr/methods.shtml#Kemeny-Young , it's also vulnerable to compromising, burying, and crowding. It's not a religious belief, though (grin), so I'm willing to change my mind in the face of convincing evidence. If there is a method you prefer, you might show me an example of how Kemeny gets it wrong compared to your favorite method. Or if you like, you can let me know what method you think is better and I can try to come up with an example where Kemeny-Young is superior (though I'm at work <on lunch> now so it may be awhile, and remember it's an NP-hard problem so no fair piling on the candidates/voters). Mike Rouse [EMAIL PROTECTED] PS I would support legislation for any Condorcet-compliant method if it came up for a vote, since the probable difference between methods that satisfy that are probably a few percent at best.

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