EM list-- I've just realized that I missed Saari's correction at the beginning of his letter. His remark about electing a Condorcet losser referred only to non-pairwise methods that meet the Majority Favorite Criterion, I realized when I noticed the correction. I don't have the copy of his letter right here, but he says that pairwise-count methods have other serious difficulties that he doesn't specify there. Difficulties like his example that was posted here, where the addition of some voters changed the outcome, even though those new voters, by themselves, would have made a symmetrical circular tie? He says that it isn't about separate ballotings before & after the voters are combined, but that it's about looking at different parts of the set of ballots from one balloting. If that weren't so, I'd object that voters strategize differently when they're in a different electorate. But I don't understand why it's important what those 2 separate subsets of the ballots would do if they were separately counted-- they aren't separately counted, so what meaning does the idea have? Who's wronged? Who'd protest the outcome or be forced to strategize to avoid it? *** It seems to me that if one could object to that example, it would be by saying it in terms of a criterion like this: If a subset of an elections ballots, counted separate from the rest, would result in a tie, then the count result shouldn't be changed if those ballots aren't counted. *** If I refer to that again I'll call the it Independence from Tied Voters Criterion (ITVC). The Consistency Criterion doesn't seem important for the same reason as ITVC. If it were construed to about separate ballotings before & after voter subsets are combined, then I could say that people wouldn't necessarily vote the same in both situations. If it's merely about looking at different subsets of the ballots from one balloting, then I don't understand the importance of that. But hasn't Saari mentioned Consistency as an advantage of Borda? Approval meets ITVC & Consistency, and it beats Borda at its own game by meeting a Consistency-related criterion that's about candidates instead of voters: Deleting from the ballots one or more losing candidates shouldn't change the matter of who wins the count. (No new balloting is conducted; the same ballots are used, with the deletion(s) ). (It seems to stand to reason that if you delete from a Plurality ballot the candidate that someone voted for, then it becomes as if that voter had turned in a blank ballot. Deleting from an Approval ballot a candidate for whom that voter voted removes his name and the vote for him. Deleting a candidate who is voted for in a ranked ballot means that the other candidates in the ballot are renumbered according to their rank position when the deleted candidate isn't there. That's all agreeable isn't it?) *** That sounds similar to IIAC, and it makes me realize that I don't know really know what IIAC is. Anyway, Approval meets that criterion, and Borda fails it. I wonder what can be said for Borda but not for Approval. Maybe I'll find out from Saari's new letter, arrived today on the list, which I haven't read yet. And maybe that letter will tell what serious difficulties all pairwise methods have that Borda doesn't have. If it's only ITVC, or the example I discussed in this letter, then I don't count that as a difficulty, much less a serious one. I should check that new letter out, but any advantage or criticism of a method seems a little questionable when it can't be stated in a brief paragraph. Mike Ossipoff ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com