Dear Anthony, you wrote (27 Jan 2004): > I suggest that a definition of the condorcet election method being > publicly proposed should be explicit about the full pairwise > analysis, and that the possibility of a circular tie, and the > resolution of such a circular tie should be treated like a footnote.
I don't agree with you. For example: Suppose someone promotes Tideman's ranked pairs method. This method satisfies Condorcet, monotonicity, independence of clones, reversal symmetry, etc.. When he promotes only the Condorcet criterion and treats the ranked pairs method only in a footnote then the readers will mistakenly believe that the main reason or even the sole reason why he promotes this method is that it satisfies Condorcet. However, in so far as this method also satisfies monotonicity, independence of clones, reversal symmetry, etc. this method is a very good method even when the readers don't consider the Condorcet criterion to be important. Therefore, instead of promoting Condorcet methods in general and mentioning Tideman's ranked pairs method only in a footnote, I suggest to promote Tideman's ranked pairs method in general and to mention that this method happens to satisfy the Condorcet criterion only in a footnote. In my opinion, the Condorcet criterion should be treated as one criterion among many criteria. Otherwise there is the danger that when a given reader doesn't consider the Condorcet criterion to be important then he will consider Tideman's ranked pairs method to be completely worthless. Markus Schulze ---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
