At 04:47 AM 3/8/2007, Scott Ritchie wrote: >If we could reduce elections down to two candidates efficiently, we >wouldn't even need to discuss voting systems.
That is correct. Indeed, this is the appeal of Condorcet, it *seems* that it reduces elections to a series of such contests. But, unfortunately, it does not, and sequence matters, in fact. However, in practice, we *do* reduce elections down to two candidates, under almost all present conditions. We do it rather badly, though. Now, key word: "efficiently." We *could* reduce elections to two candidates, and we could do it well, that is, we could optimize the outcome quite strongly, using standard deliberative process. But, on a large scale, this process becomes quite inefficient. The "traffic" grows exponentially with size. However, Delegable Proxy and similar solutions could theoretically address this problem. For example, Asset Voting. The secret ballot election is actually similar to a primary where delegates are elected. The delegates will make the actual decision (with a primary, whom to run as a candidate). And with Asset as we generally propose it, any voter can effectively nominate a delegate and give this delegate his or her vote. (This is why Asset is like DP.) Assembly formation through requiring a quota of votes to participate, but then allowing candidates with unused votes to redistribute them at will, is one device for creating an assembly that could then use deliberative process to determine a winner. Note that deliberative process is *not* necessary for representation, it is really only necessary for officers or for "representation" where a very limited number of representatives are elected. Delegable Proxy is more flexible than Asset, though Asset becomes DP, in fact, when DP is used in the post-election process. We have usually used the term Asset to refer to single-winner or to peer assembly elections, where every member has the same voting power. A DP assembly would have variable voting power for members, and thus could accomodate deeper representation within a given assembly size. Which is better depends on how important it is for members to have equal voting power. It is certainly the tradition. ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
