Mike O had written:
We often hear about how Condorcet, but not Approval, lets you help
Favorite against
Compromise.
I agree, but not with Mike O's many words. He offers one special case
- I will try to be general as to the ideas, but base my thoughts on
Plurality, Approval, and a sample Condorcet method.
Starting with the example Mike O provides below, C is Worse, A or B is
Favorite, and remaining candidate, B or A, is Compromise.
Any of the three, as well as many other methods, can be used to vote
for a single candidate:
. A
. B
Approval or Condorcet can vote for more than one with equal approval
or ranking:
. AB
Condorcet can vote for 1-to-many at each of multiple ranks, with each
preferred over all but those given the same or a higher rank by the
same voter:
. A>B
. B>A
Condorcet allows voting for both A and B, while showing preference for
the preferred candidate.
On May 8, 2012, at 1:33 AM, Richard Fobes wrote:
On 5/7/2012 11:10 AM, Michael Ossipoff wrote:
Yeah? How about this, then?:
27: A>B (they prefer A to B, and B to C)
24: B>A
49: C (indifferent between everyone other than C)
Cases that require carefully chosen numbers, as this example does,
become less important than patterns that occur over many elections.
His discussion involved multiple voters considering cooperating -
possible, but such discussion is not practical when electing such as a
governor. A Condorcet voter - notice the ranking implied for the
voting - can use any ballot variation I describe above.
A Condorcet voter can choose among AB, A>B, and B>A in response to
what ever his studying and/or debating leads to.
You pointing out a weakness that can only occur in rare cases is
quite different than, say, what happened in Burlington and Aspen
where IRV declared a non-Condorcet winner after only one (or perhaps
just a few?) elections.
IRV requires decisions based only on whatever is weakest top choice on
each ballot - usually proper loser, but true unwanted requires
considering all that each voter votes.
Mike, if you really want to elevate FBC above the Condorcet
criterion, I suggest that you start by noticing that it is the only
voting criterion in the Wikipedia comparison table that does not
link to a Wikipedia article about the criterion (and such a link is
also missing from the text section just above the table). I'll let
other election-method experts debate with you on Wikipedia if you
choose to add a Wikipedia article about FBC.
As for comparing FBC to Condorcet, have you not noticed that other
debates about which criteria is more important than another criteria
typically end up being inconclusive because mathematics supports the
recognition that no single voting method is objectively "best"?
And FBC cannot happen with Approval, for those ballots do not have the
information for FBC to consider.
As I've said on this forum before, some studies should be done to
compare _how_ _often_ each method fails each criterion. Those
numbers would be quite useful for comparing criteria in terms of
importance. In the meantime, just a checkbox with a "yes" or "no"
leaves us partially blind.
(I changed the subject line because the subject line is not intended
to be used to specify who you are writing to. The subject line
should indicate the topic.)
Good point! Also important to say when they posted it, for readers to
look back to the previous post.
Richard Fobes
Dave Ketchum
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