On Thu, 17 Jul 2008 18:23:20 +0300 Juho wrote:
On Jul 17, 2008, at 16:12 , Bruce R. Gilson wrote:
My beef with Condorcet methods is
that you need to have a cycle-resolving procedure (which you don't in
any other system, except in the case of exact ties
Unfortunately other methods need to resolve the cycles just as well
(not necessarily with an explicit "sub-procedure" but one way or
another in any case).
and I feel that having a cycle-resolving procedure that the
voters both UNDERSTAND and ACCEPT AS FAIR may not be easy to do.
If the method is presented to the voters as containing first the
"normal procedure" and then an exceptional "cycle-resolving
procedure" then the voters may get worried due to not understanding
what the exceptional procedure exactly means. But of course this is
just psychological, not related to if the winners in that method are
good or not.
This can be said more clearly than is, too often, done:
For each candidate pair, x and y, as many voters as choose rank
either x>y or y>x.
The one candidate winning each of its pairs, by being liked by
more voters than the opposing candidate, is elected.
If no such candidate, we have a cycle such as A>B>C>A in which:
Each of A/B/C would win over all others (d-z)
Each would win over at least one other cycle member.
Each would lose to at least one other cycle member.
Thus there is a near tie. A lottery among them would be
reasonable, but Condorcet normally tries to do better - though we can
debate, before such an election, over exactly how we shall proceed.
Other methods like IRV also need to break the same cycles. The
breaking of the cycles is not explicitly visible in the IRV procedure
description. That hides the breaking from the voters and may keep
them more satisfied (or more ignorant of the cycle-resolving
process). One would need to also avoid giving out any detailed
information about the cast votes in IRV if one wants to hide the
cycles, since otherwise the media can point out that there was a
cycle and demonstrate how it was resolved (in favour of some
candidate that all do not like and that would have lost to someone in
pairwise comparison).
Condorcet is btw not a very good classification of methods that have
an explicit cycle-resolving procedure since some Condorcet methods
don't have it. E.g. Minmax just finds the candidate whose worst
defeat is least bad in one step (without any explicit cycle-resolving
phase/procedure). Depending on how the results are announced some
clever voters or media may however find out also in Minmax that there
was a cycle of opinions.
It is also quite easy to "UNDERSTAND and ACCEPT AS FAIR" some basic
Condorcet methods like Minmax(margins) since it elects simply the
candidate that needs least number of additional votes to win all
others. (On the other hand all methods tend to have cases where one
can at least disagree on which winner is the best. Clear agreements
and understanding of the target utility function is needed when the
election method is chosen.)
The last statement needs emphasis. How cycles are to be resolved for
a location had better be decided before Condorcet is used in an
election there.
Juho
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