In a message dated 10/6/04, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > You may not take it that Paul has conceded anything > since nobody's ever answered the original question. > > 5 of 9 voters voted C>A. > > Paul's question is how can anyone justify A's win. > > No one has addressed that. Until they do, ad hominems are > just an example of how unlikely it will be to convince voters > to change election methods. >>
But in the example you cite, 7 of 9 voters voted B>C, so how could anyone justify C's win? And 6 out of 9 voters voted A>B, so how could anyone justify B's win? The experts all agree that there is no perfect voting method that will satisfy everyone in every conceivable case, so the goal must be to find the method that will result in the most satisfaction overall compared with other methods. One question this list doesn't address very much is how often the kinds of cycles that bother you (and everyone else) would occur in actual voting situations. It's an empirical question for which there is now very little data, because Condorcet voting has rarely if ever been used in any elections of public officials, and it has been used only slightly less rarely in other kinds of elections (e.g., in elections held by nongovernmental organizations). Advocates of instant runoff voting, which has been used in enough public elections to provide some useful data, argue in response to criticisms of it that there have been few if any instances where the theoretical problems it poses have actually been a factor in elections. It may well be that if Condorcet voting were used in a variety of public elections over an extended period, over 99% of cases if not 100% would have true Condorcet winners and no cycles. That is, in each case the winning candidate would be prefered over every other candidate if matched one to one. If that were the result, then I suspect Condorcet would be widely preferred over other methods and you would not have any problems with it. But unfortunately, the empirical data needed to fairly evaluate different voting methods in real world elections just doesn't exist right now. That's a problem I wish the participants on this list would devote more attention to. Has anyone proposed any promising ways to test different methods empirically? Has any such testing been done, and if so, what have been the results? -Ralph Suter ---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
