Jonathan Lundell wrote:
On Feb 14, 2010, at 4:46 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
We may disagree with the counting method that is applied when
35:A 32:B>C 33:C
occurs, but it seems very clear that the Condorcet winner in this
case is C, as you seem to agree with me in this case.
Yes. The A voters express no preference between B and C. A is the
plurality winner. But only 35 voters support A, 65 oppose A by
their votes.
We don't actually know that. Suppose the B>C voters are saying, "I
love B, hate C, and have no idea who A is". Granted, in this limited
example, they could easily have voted B>A>C to indicate something
like that. But if there are a lot of candidates who may be unknown to
many voters, it's asking a lot for them to list them all (whether or
not we allow equality of preference).
I've been thinking of the possibility of handling indifference
differently. Suppose that '*' means "all candidates not explicitly
ranked". Then
A>B is interpreted as usual, implying A>B>*
But A>*>B mean A is best, B is worst, and all the others are
indifferent, without having to rank them explicitly between A & B.
Would it be possible to use something like Warren's quorum rule here, so
that if a voter ranks A>B but not A>B>C, then the B vs C and A vs C
contest remains completely unaltered?
I suppose so, but would it be any good?
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