Dear Ted, I interpret Condorcet as follows: (1) Condorcet mistakenly believed that, when you successively lock the strongest pairwise defeats, then you get a linear ordering of the candidates before locking a defeat creates a directed cycle. (2) Condorcet mistakenly believed that, when you successively eliminate the weakest pairwise defeat that is in a directed cycle until there are no directed cycles anymore, then the remaining pairwise defeats always define a unique linear ordering of the candidates.
Markus Schulze ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
