On Re: [EM] Does IRV elect "majority winners?" Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
Dave Ketchum wrote:
Condorcet certainly costs more for the system than Plurality. Costs
bullet-voters nothing - provides a service to whichever voters like to
do more than bullet vote.
Actually can be a service to candidates. Clinton and Obama had
to try to kill their competitor's campaign for the Democrat nomination
they could not share. A similar race in Condorcet would let them both
get nominated and have a more civilized fight as to which should be
ranked higher than the other on the ballot.
If people tend to bullet-vote, it may be the case that elections in
general suffer from vote-splitting - simply because if C splits into C1
and C2, people either bullet-vote C1 or C2.
In the Condorcet election described above, Clinton and Obama would have
been ENCOURAGING voters to vote for both of them - that the voters should
consider both C>O and O>C according to which they preferred.
That is consistent with bullet voting in the many elections where that is
appropriate.
On the other hand, the mayor election data that was given on this list
earlier seems to show that people don't bullet-vote as much as one would
expect (even though one should be careful in deriving conclusions from
sample sizes of one).
Bucklin deserves more thought as a competitor to Condorcet.
Bucklin doesn't do that well, Yee-wise. It's simple, however; I'll grant
that. As far as criteria go, it fails independence of clones, is not
reversal symmetric, and can elect a Condorcet loser (according to WP).
How do you count equal ranking in IRV? If I vote X>A=B>Y, A and B
become visible to the counters at the same time - what does this do to
deciding what candidate is next to mark lost?
I would assume that if one does A = B > Y and A is eliminated, then the
ballot becomes B > Y next - "the ballots are transformed as if the
candidate in question never ran".
Note that your words imply that A and B are each counted when neither has
yet been eliminated - an advantage over the voter having to vote either A>B
or B>A.
The difference from A > B > Y or B > A
> Y would be that both would be counted the first time around, either
with a full point to each ("whole") or half ("fractional").
Approval, Plurality and IRV are distractions from need to pick a live
destination. I see need to compare, more carefully, Condorcet vs
Range vs Bucklin.
Range reduces to Approval if enough people use strategy. I think that
any version of cardinal ratings should either be DSV or have some sort
of Condorcet analysis (like CWP does, or perhaps not that far). Those
are my opinions, though, and others (like Abd) may disagree.
Agreed that voters can CHOOSE to express the same restricted thoughts in
Range as offered by Approval - but Range includes abilities beyond
Approval's limited ability (just as Condorcet voters can express
Plurality's limited thought).
The CW has been compared with EACH other candidate, and found better
liked in every case. However this does not guarantee a majority,
since voters are not each required to rank all candidates.
That's right. And, in fact, it could only be a small minority who so
voted, i.e., that the winner was "better liked." Majority
requirements *require* that the electorate actually consider and
accept or reject a winner.
A "small minority" cannot win in Condorcet, except for the tortured
case of a zillion candidates with at most a small minority voting for
any one.
I am still trying to promote series thought as to need for a majority
for other than Plurality or Approval.
A worst-case point of view might be to consider the groups maximally
different. That is, nobody who voted A > B also voted A > C. From that
point of view, and a strict interpretation of "majority", one would have
to have the weakest victory be one of a majority - that is, for the
candidate X so that the magnitude of the win of A against X is least, A
must beat X by a majority.
Let me offer bullet voting in Condorcet:
32 A
33 B
34 C
C wins because, with 99 voters, C's 34 makes it CW.
This encompasses the standard majority setting where a majority votes A
> [everybody else]. It's not equal to it, as one may see from this example:
A > B > C > D
C > B > D > A
D > B > C > A
A > B > D > C
B has a majority against C, D, and A.
Huh? 2 A>B vs 2 B>A?
It's also a worst-case point of view because it errs "safe" in the case
of truncation - truncation so that A is not ranked on the ballot means
that no victory for A above some other candidate will be counted for
that ballot.
Each ranked candidate counts toward beating each unranked candidate, as
well as toward beating each lower ranked candidate!
BTW - cost of ballot support for complete ranking can tempt limits
on Condorcet ranking. How bad should we complain if offered 3 as in
RCV?
Three seems like a good minimum, with cost vs voter desires
controlling whether more get implemented.
I don't know much about the cost of optical scanning machines, but
presumably getting one with 8 or 10 sensors shouldn't be that more
expensive than one with 3. They wouldn't have to be specialized, either,
since optical scanning is used for other things than counting ballots.
Eight sensors may be affordable. How much space on the paper ballot is
required for the eight targets to be sensed - for you do this for each
candidate for each race.
The ideal solution as far as granularity is concerned would be to have a
machine that does OCR, and where voters just write a number in a box
next to the candidate (1 for first place, 20 for twentieth). That would
be quite a bit more expensive, though, and would also need some sort of
fallback... or just manual counting.
Tempting - needs more thought.
--
da...@clarityconnect.com people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek
Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026
Do to no one what you would not want done to you.
If you want peace, work for justice.
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