Here's the Practical Democracy method (Fred Gohlke, in thread "language/framing quibble"). I'll show just three process steps (or levels), culminating in the final selection (AA) at step 3.
Practical: --------- 1 (A) (B) (C) (D) (E) (F) (G) (H) (I) (J) (K) (L) (M) (N) (O) (P) (Q) (R) | / | / | / | / | / | / | / | / | / | / | / | / | / | / | / | / | / | / |/ |/ |/ |/ |/ |/ |/ |/ |/ (S) (T) (Y) (U) (V) (Z) (W) (X) (AA) 2 (S) (T) (U) (V) (W) (X) | / | / | / | --- | --- | --- |/ |/ |/ (X) (Y) (AA) 3 (X) (Y) | / | ------------------- |/ (AA) This looks like a delegate cascade (or delegable proxy), in which the structure was serialized. If we un-serialize it by gluing all three steps together, we obtain the equivalent decision as expressed by a cascade: Cascade: ------- (A) (B) (C) (D) (E) (F) (G) (H) (I) (J) (K) (L) (M) (N) (O) (P) (Q) (R) | / | / | / | / | / | / | / | / | / | / | / | / | / | / | / | / | / | / |/ |/ |/ |/ |/ |/ |/ |/ |/ (S) (T) / (U) (V) / (W) (X) / | / / | / / | / / | ----------- | ----------- | ----------- |/ |/ |/ (Y) (Z) / | / / | ------------------------------------------- |/ (AA) The difference with the cascade is that voters (all nodes) are free to shift their votes (edges) at any time, in response to the current state of the election. Also, they can vote for anyone at all (A to Z and AA) - they are not constrained to triads (binary order of tree). Suppose we ran the practical method first, selecting AA. Then we translated the same votes over to the cascade method (as shown above), then let it run from there. Would the selection be *expected* to hold? Would a rational C, for example, be expected to keep voting for T (or maybe directly for Y or AA)? And so on, for all the other voters and delegates? Suppose not. Suppose they deliberate for another 3 months. At the end of that time, instead of 100% of the votes cascading to AA, we have 66% of them cascading to X (and 33% for others). Something like this: (A) (B) (C) (D) (E) (F) (G) (U) (I) (Z) (K) (L) (M) (N) (O) (P) (Q) (R) | / | / | / | / | / | / | / | / | / | / | / | / | / | / | / | / | / | / |/ |/ |/ |/ |/ |/ |/ |/ |/ (S) (Y) / (H) (V) / | (W) / | / / | / / | / | ----------- | ----------- | ----------- |/ |/ |/ (T) (J) (AA) | / | ------------------- |/ (X) Who then would be the better choice, AA or X? (I say X. Most of those under the power of the office have assented to placing X there, by their votes. They had not assented to placing AA.) -- Michael Allan Toronto, 647-436-4521 http://zelea.com/ ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info