robert bristow-johnson wrote:
i just think that the strategy of swinging an election from the
Condorcet winner into a cycle is just a risky strategy. you never know
who will come out on top; your worst enemy might just as well as the
centrist may or as well as your candidate. with something like Schulz
(or Ranked Pairs which does not result in a different candidate with a
Smith set of 3, and bigger than 3 seems to me even more unlikely than
that of getting a cycle anyway), you are emphasizing more decisive
elections in settling the ambiguity of a cycle.
say Ranked Pairs was the law, what kind of realistic strategizing can a
party or group of candidate supporters do? that example of tossing a
close election between RC (for radical center) and M (the centrist
candidate who is also the Condorcet winner if sincere ballots are cast)
is, in my opinion, too contrived to be a secure strategic guidance. any
strategy that can just as well backfire, is no strategy.
The usual "nightmare" scenario for Condorcet goes somewhat like this:
Say you have three contenders (A, B, C) as well as mostly-unknown
candidates D...Z.
The A camp says: "we need to pile candidates up on B and C so they won't
win". Thus they vote A > D...Z > B = C.
The B camp says: "we need to pile candidates up on A and C so they won't
win". Thus they vote B > D...Z > A = C.
The C camp says: "we need to pile candidates up on A and B so they won't
win". Thus they vote C > D...Z > A = B
A few others (minor candidate supporters) vote D...Z > ...
Then a mediocre candidate, say D, wins.
In short, if everybody goes on a burial spree, Condorcet methods fail.
It's not too realistic, although Warren disagrees
(http://rangevoting.org/DH3.html ). It's probably more likely with Borda
because Borda is centrist biased and can even fail Majority.
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