Dear James Green-Armytage, you wrote (26 May 2004): > I think that 2 balloting wv Condorcet (2nd balloting only in > the event of a cycle, and with the option for candidates to > withdraw *in between* ballotings) is an extremely good proposal > for public elections. This is what I would propose for a public > election if anyone seriously asked me now.
I don't think that having a second balloting is a good idea. 1) When you promote a second balloting then you make the readers mistakenly believe that Condorcet methods have a serious problem when there is no Condorcet winner. However, in my opinion, the currently discussed Condorcet methods (esp. Tideman's ranked pairs method, Heitzig's river method, my beatpath method) are very good single-winner election methods even in the absence of a Condorcet winner, since these methods also satisfy monotonicity, reversal symmetry, independence of clones, majority for solid coalitions, etc.. 2) A very important argument for preferential ballots is that they don't require a second balloting. When you promote a second balloting even for preferential ballots then you lose one of your arguments for preferential ballots. 3) The probability is very large that in the second balloting there are only candidates of the same party. Voters who don't support this party will then be deterred from participating at the second balloting. 4) A second balloting will encourage the voters to vote insincerely in the first balloting. The voters will believe that they can vote insincerely in the first balloting without any risk; these voters will believe that they can see in the first balloting whether their strategy would strike back so that (when they see that it would strike back) they can still vote sincerely in the second balloting so that they don't risk anything when they vote insincerely in the first balloting. A second balloting will also encourage the voters to vote insincerely in the second balloting because they will believe that they have very precise information about the strengths of the candidates. Markus Schulze ---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
