Dear Diego, you wrote:
The risk of minority will remains. How does FAWRB perform in binary issues?
What you mean by "risk of minority"? That a minority favourite may win? Well, that is just the *feature* of FAWRB: It gives each part of the electorate full control over an equal share of the winning probability. This is the requirement of democracy.
So, when 55% prefer A and 45% prefer B and both groups do not care to look for a good compromise C or do not cooperate in electing such a good compromise by using FAWRBs cooperation mechanism, then indeed A will win with 55% probability and B will win with 45% probability - which is just fair and what a democratically thinking person would expect. This also answers your question about the binary case.
However, let me point out that in most real-world issues, there is a possibility to come up with a good compromise option.
Sometimes, for example, this can be achieved by "side payments", that is, C is A plus some payments (or other forms of compensation) from the A supporting group to the B supporting group.
Once a good compromise is found, using FAWRB makes it probable that this compromise is also elected. Majoritarian methods fail here since with them, the majority has no incentive at all not to bullet vote for A and thus overrule the rest.
If a consensus exists between the factions, then this danger would be too rare. There`s no gain for any faction to leave the issue undecided.
I don't think so. In my experience of politics it is often the case that one faction strongly wants to stick with the status quo, so they would have a strong incentive to refuse cooperation under your scheme.
Not always we can find an unanimity...
Yes, that's exactly the reason why sometimes we need to resort to a chance process in order to give every voter their fair right to influence the decision.
Yours, Jobst ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
