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Dear Curt, you described your example as 51 mild supporters of A and 49 passionate supporters of B, but how about 51 A(100), B(99) 49 B(60), A(40) The 51 seem more enthusiastic (if not passionate) than the 49, and B seems to be a more moderate candidate. Not knowing anything about the qualifications of A or B, but being forced to mediate this election, I would tend to favor B, but I would be willing to give A a fair chance in a random ballot drawing. Otherwise the 51 voters would see a slight reward for insincerely down rating B, and these honest ballots would be increasingly rare in future elections. When elections give a fair chance to everybody, there is little incentive to manipulate one's way into a better position. In the long run, the interests of democracy are better served when the pressure is lowered by a pinch of potential randomness, where appropriate. I f there is a Condorcet Winner, and this CW is also the approval winner, in that case there is no need for a random drawing, which is why I say "potential" randomness. Otherwise, at minimum each member of the set P (consisting of candidates that pairwise beat every candidate with greater approval ) should have a chance at winning. Sometimes I think that P should be expanded to include all candidates that have a beat path to the approval winner. Forest Curt wrote ... Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2005 01:34:31 -0700 From: Curt Siffert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [EM] summary answers I am curious about the answers to the following questions regarding Condorcet. Forgive me if these are simplistic, I am kind of looking for a summary of what the consensus is here: 1) Are there cases where you would consider a candidate outside the Schwartz set to be the proper winner? 2) Are there cases where you would consider a candidate outside the Smith set to be the proper winner? I'm curious about that in terms of criteria/strategy, but I'm also curious about it in a larger way - because I think I remember Mike saying that if we could be assured of sincere ballots, he'd prefer the Borda winner - even if there were a different Condorcet Winner. I disagree with that stance because I believe that it is simply more appropriate to accord equal power to each voter, rather than allow a passionate minority power over a less passionate majority. Who's to say the minority is not ignorant as well as passionate? I guess an alternate way of asking the larger question is: 3) In a two candidate race, if 51% mildly preferred A to B, and 49% passionately preferred B to A, who should win? I was surprised to find out that some of you might say "B". If that is true, then I find the discussion emphasis on Condorcet tiebreakers kind of odd. (For those of you who would say it depends on whether it is a political vote... I might agree with that. But I am mostly thinking of political votes when I ask the question.)
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