At 05:23 PM 4/21/2010, Terry Bouricius wrote:
Abd has made much of a proposal of Charles Dodgson tweaking STV by
allowing candidates to assign exhausted ballots...but that is NOT
the system that Dodgson's name is normally attached to. His name is
attached to a Condorcet method (but not knowing of Condorcet's prior
invention) using a matrix in which each cell was a fraction with a
numerator was the number of voters who ranked the row option ahead
of the column option, and the denominator was the number of voters
whose column option ahead of the row option. He proposed that cycles
not be settled, but rather that this would result in "no election."
Thanks, Terry.
This would explain the discrepancy between Mr. Myers' comments and
mine and Mr. Quinn's. I'm not familiar with Dodgson's Condorcet
method, which is obviously a single-winner method. It's interesting
that he considered "no election" a possible outcome, that would be in
line with what he would know of standard deliberative process.
It is not Asset which is "computationally infeasible," but, perhaps,
this particular Condorcet method. Asset, of course, is a device for
reducing the number of voters in an election to a set of public
voters, who handle electing any seats not directly elected by the
voters through vote transfers without eliminations (strictly,
eliminations can be used, until all ballots are exhausted while not
having been completely used for election, these exhausted ballots
then become the "property," at their "unspent" value, of the
candidate in first position, I presume, whether or not this candidate
has been elected). If all one wants is to finish an election, it is
possible that the Droop quota could be used, but I prefer the
simplicity of the Hare quota in terms of what it means for the voting
power of members and how that relates to the number of voters who
supported, directly or indirectly, a candidate. If the Droop quota is
used, and the number of electors is relatively small, then an extra
seat might be elected, should the electors with remaining votes end
up agreeing on someone to carry this voting power in the elected
assembly. I prefer to aim for the higher number as a limit, and then
there is no question of the value of each elector's vote.
This becomes important if, for later process, direct voting is to be
allowed by electors. Asset makes that possible.
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