First, a quick point: There are (at least) two separate issues discussed on this list. One is methods themselves, like Ranked Pairs vs. SSD vs. IRV vs. Borda; this issue generates most of the interesting posts and debates. The other is the procedures of compiling the pairwise matrix for pairwise methods to operate on, like margins vs. winning-votes vs. all-votes (though I don't believe anyone still advocates all-votes). These two issues are entirely orthogonal-- any pairwise method can use either the margins or the winning-votes approach, and I think Markus still prefers win-or-tie-votes for the official definition of Schulze's Method.
Now Mike Ossipoff wants to discourage strategic truncation, but he doesn't find it important not to encourage strategic equal rankings high in the ballot. I don't see truncations as anything but a specific case of equal rankings. To me, a vote of A>B when there are five candidates is simply a vote of A>B>C=D=E. I don't think this case is any more special than a case like A=B>C=D>E. Mike does, his favorite criteria reflect that, and that's why he prefers winning-votes, which of course is perfectly fine for him. What hurts a candidate most using a winning-votes method is being ranked under another. Being ranked equal to another hardly hurts at all. On average, ranking two candidates equally hurts neither. It's good strategy to vote ties among candidates you like and be decisive among candidates you don't. On the other hand, margins methods don't favor one over the other on average. Sometimes voting two candidates equally helps them and sometimes it hurts them, but it always has the same expected effect as if you had flipped a coin between them. To me the bottom line is this: Any evil strategy that a margins method allows is possible in the corresponding winning-votes method, whether by flipping coins or by coordinated bloc voting. So, as Blake has explained, winning-votes prevents nothing. It only provides more strategic options for the insincere voter, and it punishes the voter who sincerely "truncates". I would like to believe that winning-votes is effective, but since it's not, and margins is more intuitive and so much better on social utility, I prefer margins. In fact, the false assurance that winning-votes gives its fans reminds me of my favorite analogy of Mike's: "someone sitting in the driver's seat of a car that's up on blocks, having fun turning the steering wheel back and forth" (from his classic anti-IRV post http://groups.yahoo.com/group/election-methods-list/message/6500). Margins vs. winning-votes is obviously a religious argument, though, so I don't expect to change anyone's mind. It's a bit like Newcomb's Paradox (explained at http://www.magnolia.net/~leonf/paradox/newcomb.html), which people seem to resolve each way in roughly equal numbers, but each group is entirely convinced that the other is being silly. Personally, I'd like to concentrate on newer, more interesting debates. ===== Rob LeGrand [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.aggies.org/honky98/ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Greetings - Send FREE e-cards for every occasion! http://greetings.yahoo.com