On 4 April 2010 21:15, Sean Hunt <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 04/04/2010 11:25 AM, Ed Murphy wrote: >> >> I was trying to implement instant runoff voting, e.g. if the votes are >> 3 for ais523 >> 3 for BobTHJ >> 2 for comex >> 1 for (comex, ais523) >> then the last vote evaluates to ais523. >> >> Attempted rewrite: >> >> An ordered list of multiple choices is equivalent to a conditional >> vote for the first choice in the list that could be the outcome, >> depending on the evaluation of all conditional votes. > > This is exactly the issue; multiple such votes would be instantly ambiguous > because they depend on each other, and circularity leads to PRESENT - see > Rule 2127. > > -coppro
The only way to make this type of 'votes which transfer conditionally' system work is to demand that the winner must have a majority of votes, ie instant-runoff voting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting . That might actually be a better way of electing officers, although whether it would make any difference in practice is debatable. As coppro says, outside of such a system multiple conditionally transferable votes simply lead to PRESENT, so the rules do need changing away from the current to either straight FPTP/plurality or to IRV. -- Charles Walker
