Lowest Number of First Choice votes tie breaker, Ver.2

[Mike Ossipoff]

First of all, with 3 candidates, you can have 6 preference orderings
of those 3 candidates. Considering truncation, there are only
9 possible rankings, not 15 (the figure you gave):

A          B          C

A          B          C
B          A          A

A          B          C
C          C          B


Your last rows of rankings unnecessarily & meaninglessly 
rank a last choice. 

***

Realistic? Your examples where every possible ranking occurs
frequently enough to be important in the election & in the example
is most unrealistic.

To use my usual Presidential example, how many Dole voters would
like Nader's policy proposals better than those of Republocrat Clinton?
How many Republicans would consider Nader's policies closer to
the Republican policies than those of Clinton. 

No, in general, it would be unrealistic to include all possible
rankings in numbers sufficient to be important in the election
& the example.

***

I'm sorry you don't like the Dole, Clinton, Nader example.
It isn't quite clear why you believe that that example reflects
my personal preference of candidates. Well, it is the Dole voters
who usually do the truncating--but that needn't mean they're
more dishonest--I refuse to say whether they or their candidate
is less honest :-)   In my examples the Dole voters, not the
Nader voters, are the ones in a position to create a strategic
circular tie. Simple as that.

My personal preference? It's to not have a lesser-of-2-evils
problem. Admittedly, my examples are about the progressives having
a lesser-of-2-evils problem. Do conservatives have one too? Probably.
But we most often hear progressives always giving the same "pragmataic"
reason for voting for the Democrats, for whom they have no respect,
and whom they don't trust at all. Therefore, it's reasonable for
the examples to show the progressives having a lesser-of-2-evils
problem (or not having one, depending on the method).

Maybe you prefer candidates A, B, & C, or candidates X, Y, & Z,
but it seems to me that 3 candidates in the upcoming Presidential
election is a much more meaningful, natural & clear example.

Why not use more candidates? For the obvious reason that it
would greatly complicate the examples. Besides, it's easy to
demonstrate how most methods screw up, using only 3 candidates.
For instance Instant Runoff & Demorep's method will easily &
often fail with 3 candidates.


Mike


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