On Fri, 25 Feb 2005 00:01:11 -0800 Russ Paielli wrote:
Let raise both a practical and a theoretical concern about equal rankings in Condorcet voting.
First the practical concern. Think about how an equal-ranking capability would would work on a touch-screen voting machine. I've actually designed and programmed a full-featured GUI for voting (http://ElectionMethods.org/GVI.htm), so I have thought about it a bit. My GVI does not allow equal rankings (unless you are using it for Approval). The candidates are ranked in the order they are selected (with backtrack capability, of course). How would the voter tell the machine to rank two candidates equal? The voter would have to press a button or do something to indicate that the next selection should be made equal to the previous selection. You may consider that simple enough, but let me tell you that it would be a *major* sticking point in practice. Remember all those brilliant Gore voters in 2000 who couldn't figure out how to vote for their candidate in a simple plurality election?
I see you have a different picture.
Mine starts with the paper absentee ballot, where I see no way to move the names around, and place a box beside each name for the voter to enter rank. Trying to make it easy, I say that 2 beats 5, whether or not there is a rank 3 or 4 between them.
Having got this far, a voter could rank two 3s, which I accept as equal.
Having done as easy as I know how on paper, I find it easy to do the same thing on touch-screen.
On the theoretical side, what exactly would an equal-ranking capability accomplish? Does it give the voter some significant strategic mechanism, or is it simply way for the voter to express indecision? If it's the latter, then it is completely unnecessary. If the voter truly rates the candidates as precisely equal down to the tenth decimal place, then it really shouldn't matter to him which he ranks above the other. If the decision is really that difficult, he can flip a coin. Why make the system more complicated than it needs to be?
Conceded it complicates the counting, though I do not see that as major.
I see it as decision, rather than indecision, when the voter decides to rank 2 or more candidates as tied.
We seem unsure whether wv counts = - if we decide wvx is not worth doing, seems like we should agree that wv DOES NOT count =.
--Russ
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