Dear Ian Fellows, the Nanson method and the Baldwin method violate monotonicity and independence of clones. They also violate the desideratum that candidates, who are not in the Smith set, should not have any impact on the result of the elections.
When you try to get a Condorcet method adopted somewhere, you will not only be attacked by the FPP supporters and the IRV supporters. You will also be attacked by the supporters of all kinds of election methods. Therefore, it will not be sufficient that you argue that the proposed method is better than FPP and IRV; you will rather have to argue that the proposed method is the best of all methods. Therefore, it is useful to propose a Condorcet method that satisfies a large number of criteria. Furthermore, I don't think that it makes much sense to try to find a Condorcet method that looks as much as possible like IRV or as much as possible like Borda. The best method according to IRV's underlying heuristic will always be IRV; the best method according to the underlying heuristic of the Borda method will always be the Borda method. It makes more sense to propose a Condorcet method that stands on its own legs. Markus Schulze ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
