Kevin Venzke replied to Rob Brown: > You say you don't see much point in discussing various Condorcet > methods. > The ones that I don't like have the quality that sometimes when the > quantity of voters who rank candidate A, and don't rank candidate B > at all, > is larger than the quantity of voters who rank B at all, B can > still win. > > Here is a simple example: > 7 B>C > 5 C > 8 A > > What do you think? Is there good evidence and logic available for a > method > to decide that B is the best candidate to win?
Kevin, you maybe already know/guess my answer. B is only 2 votes short of being a Condorcet winner. C would need 3 and A 5 votes. In your comments I note that you may think that listing a candidate (higher than default bottom) has a special meaning. If there is something like an implicit approval cutoff after the listed candidates (=> 7 B>C>>A, 5 C>>A=B, 8 A>>B=C) then that should be explicitly mentioned. The used method could in this case count both the pairwise preferences and the approvals (A and C would be more approved than B), and the result could be something different than with pure ranking based ballots. Although I have some opinions on Condorcet completion I agree with Rob that too much energy is spent on the Condorcet completion debates. All methods that are Condorcet compliant are already quite good methods. Juho ___________________________________________________________ All new Yahoo! Mail "The new Interface is stunning in its simplicity and ease of use." - PC Magazine http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info