Yes, cyclic votes are not very rational nor required. Also some preference strengths may be illogical (e.g. when opinion A>C is weaker than either of A>B and B>C).
In competitive elections weak opinions may often not be needed in general. Juho --- On Tue, 27/1/09, Kristofer Munsterhjelm <km-el...@broadpark.no> wrote: > Juho Laatu wrote: > > Another approach to offering more > > flexibility (maybe not needed) and > > more strategy options (maybe not > > wanted) is to allow the voter to > > fill the pairwise matrix entries > > in whatever way. This means that > > also cycles can be recorded. > > > > One can interpret the basic > > Condorcet rules so that they do > > not rule out this option. (The > > ballot format is not defined.) > > > > (Are there good examples where > > these more flexible approaches > > would provide some definite > > improvements?) > > I think that's too flexible. Allowing a single voter to > give multiple votes (but at fractional power) can be > justified by that the voter is judging the candidates on > seperate metrics. The sum matrix is still a proper > tournament matrix. However, letting the voter arrange his > contribution to the Condorcet matrix as he wishes may let > him move the matrix out of what could be reached by ordinary > votes, which seems nonsensical. > > If one desires such flexibility, it should at least be > phrased in terms of contests. That is, setting M(A,B) to q > means you prefer A to B by fraction q, or that A won in a > "match" of some sort when facing B (such as with > round-robin tournament matrices in sports). ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info