[EM] Tom Ruen talks about bullet voting in Condorcet

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

Don quoted Tom Ruen as writing:

Well, at least in this example, Condorcet didn't give the election to A
supporters because they bullet voted, although I don't yet know in general
if Condorcet resists offering benefits to bullet voting.

Can you find any cases where bullet voting changes a candidate from a loser
to a winner in a Condorcet method election? Can you disprove this
possibility?

I reply:

In Condorcet's method:

Bullet voting can't take victory away from a Condorcet winner,
or away from a sincere Smith set member, and give it to your candidate, not 
in the sincere Smith set, unless that victim candidate has such
indifferent support that he doesn't have a majority ranking him
over your candidate.

If his support against your candidate is so indifferent, then
I'm not so sorry if you can take his victory by bullet voting. That's
because I'm more interested in the strategy needs of majorities.

Sure, in Condorcet, you could bullet vote, in the hopes that
you can thereby steal the election from someone who is indifferently
supported against your favorite. It won't work otherwise.

Bullet voting is a special case of truncation, voting a short ranking.

GSFC can be worded:

If no one falsifies a preference, and if there's a member of the sincere
Smith set who is preferred to candidate B by a majority of all the
voters, and they vote sincerely, and if B isn't in the sincere Smith set, 
then B shouldn't win.

[end of definition]

Note that that means that B can't be made to win by truncation under
those plausible conditions.

That's what I have to say about Condorcet & truncation.

GSFC is about majority rule and freedom from need for strategy.

Mike Ossipoff

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