A general comment on this discussion thread. I think what we would need here is few more well defined concepts to help us defining what we mean. The first term I'd like to see defined is a concept that I might call competitiveness. I have seen different people using different terms when referring to this or related concepts.
Competitive election is an election where voters do their best to make their side win. A non-competitive election is one where voters are just happy to express their opinions and then see who won (and be happy with whatever the result, with no interest to influence the outcome more than what they did when giving their genuine opinion). One example from real life, asking some questions from a voter before the US presidential elections. Q: Which of the candidates would be the best president? A: Independent candidate C. Q: Whom are you going to vote in the elections? A: Major party candidate A, since C has no chance of winning and A is a far better choice than B of the other major party. Two very similar questions (who should be the president) with two quite different answers. In the first (non-competitive) case the voter just told her opinion. In the second (competitive) case it was obvious to her that she should not vote her favourite but she should maximise the effect of her vote. Well, she could also have thought that this is how a two-party system works and how voters are supposed to behave. But in the second case she anyway probably felt that the other side is also going to do their best to make their candidate win, and so should she do as well, at least to balance the situation. She was thus competitive. Maybe the definition above is not perfects. But I'd anyway like to see some stable definitions of this or related terms so that we could better discuss e.g. the characteristics of Range, Condorcet, Ranked Preferences etc. It is typical to Range that it can behave in different ways in different situations, sometimes approximating Approval, sometimes using the different strengths in a more evenly distributed way. Condorcet characteristically behaves in a relatively stable way in both competitive and non-competitive situations. It has however the known risks of strategic voting in some extreme situations (that I think are not that common in large public elections). Juho Laatu P.S. Another related concept and story just for your fun. How to elect two candidates (using e.g. Condorcet): Boxing team of two members - elect the first member from A, B, C and D - elect the second member from the remaining candidates using the old ballots (or by arranging a new election with new ballots) Two colours in an advertisement - elect one of the combinations of two candidates (AB, AC, AD, BC, BD and CD) Elect a two-member team to represent our town in a meeting. Candiates are supposed to represent the whole city in a balanced way. Candidates A and B are democrats (55%). C and D are republicans (45%). - don't use either of the methods above, use something proportional instead - the likely outcome of either method would be election of two democrats This is just to demonstrate that there are different methods for different needs, just like in the competitive vs. non-competitive case. Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
