> Abd ul-Rahman Lomax> Sent: 17 April 2007 15:50 Just two points to which I wish to respond.
> The ballots could also be counted sequentially, as needed. I dislike > this, because I think every vote should be counted, even if > supposedly "moot." If I went to the trouble to cast it, it shouldn't > be tossed in the trash! This is an understandable "social choice" interpretation of ALL the information on ALL the ballot papers. But that is not what STV-PR is about, and certainly not where it came from. You vote for your first choice. Your second preference is a contingency choice, to be brought into play only if your first choice is already elected and cannot proportionately represent you as well, or has so little support that he/she has no prospect of election and is excluded (eliminated). And so on. And of course, originally it was "your vote", i.e. your whole vote, that was transferred. > If I was a candidate for office, and it turns out that many people > voted for me, but not at a high enough preference for me to be > elected, I'd hate not to know this! The result might actually be > encouraging. Or not, depending on what is in those buried votes.... The problem of excluding a "Condorcet winner" is unavoidable in STV-PR so long as we give an absolute undertaking to every voter that under no circumstances can a lower preference count against a higher preference. Most proponents of STV-PR regard that undertaking as extremely important, and that view is, in my experience, shared by the overwhelming majority of the electors with whom I have ever discussed STV. Once you change that solemn undertaking to save a "Condorcet winner" from exclusion, you open the door to tactical voting which is otherwise impossible in real STV public elections, i.e. with large numbers of electors whose preference patterns you cannot possibly know. This exclusion rule makes STV-PR non-monotonic, but that is not generally regarded as important and certainly nothing like so important as ensuring that a lower preference can never count against a higher preference. Also, the non-monotonic effect cannot be exploited by either the candidates or the voters, so it is of no practical effect. It would be nice, but we cannot have it all - at least, not all at once!! James Gilmour ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info