What apparently hasn't occurred to Don is that maybe the pairwise- count methods were originally proposed, or are now preferred by some, because they meet the Condorcet Criterion. Anytime some method meets some criterion, Don could say that the method's advocates like the criterion because their method passes it. But without proof of that, it doesn't make sense to speculate about it, and what does make sense is to consider how important the criterion seems on its own, rather than worrying about motives.
Most likely Mr. Condorcet proposed pairwise-count methods because it's a way to meet his criterion. There's nothing wrong with that. The Condorcet Criterion has worked well for us in EM's polls, meaning that methods that comply with it have chosen the sincere CW, but I consider some stronger criteria to be more important than CC, which is met by many methods--by all pairwise-count methods. CC seems too little to ask for. When written so that it applies to all methods, CC has to stipulate sincere & complete voting, an assumption that seems somewhat questionable in public elections. Mike Ossipoff _________________________________________________________________ Join the world�s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com ---- For more information about this list (subscribe, unsubscribe, FAQ, etc), please see http://www.eskimo.com/~robla/em
