Truncated ballots

[Markus Schulze]

Dear Mike,

you wrote (9 Apr 1998):
> Sorry, there is not enough information available to make this conclusion.
 It
> is possible that the first three groups find ALL of the candidates
> "acceptable", whereas the last group finds C "acceptable" but is violently
> opposed to B and A.  If this were the true situation, we could summarize by
> saying that only candidate C is acceptable to the entire group.
>
> In another situation (with the same appearance of these simple rankings) it
> might turn out that A was the only candidate acceptable to the whole group.
> Or perhaps B.  
>
> In general, simple ranking does not convey enough information to make clear
> conclusions - but it does provide just enough data for people to argue
> endlessly without possibility of success.

What do you mean with "acceptable" or "violently opposed". To my opinion,
you should always remember, that every voting method, that uses absolute
preferences, is vulnerable to exaggeration.

Whether a voter finds a decision "acceptable" depends mostly only on
how much he believed that a more prefered decision could have won.

Markus