On Thu, 14 Oct 2004, Paul Kislanko wrote:
"Likewise, IRV can suffer spoilers, a problem Condorcet avoids by reading all the ranking in each ballot."
Condorcet does not reference ballots, Condorcet depends upon the pairwise matrix which cannot be mapped back to ballots.
I've never heard of anyone wanting to take results and map them back to ballots. A summation of single votes cannot be mapped back to ballots.
Anyway, I think the original point is that Condorcet style methods consider a voter's whole expression at once, instead of only considering a tiny fragment (whichever choice is first at some stage).
Methods with this wider view are capable of finding better solutions that more narrow methods miss.
Another way: Condorcet can find a compromise choice that IRV could miss. A compromise choice might make 80% of the people mostly happy while IRV would find the choice that makes 60% happy and 40% unhappy.
Brian Olson http://bolson.org/ ---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
