[EM] first-wave Condorcet versions for public election

[James Green-Armytage]

Dear CF,
	I appreciate your feedback. Some replies follow.

>I recently re-read your paper on CWP.  I must confess that I didn't see
>much justification for it at first, but I now find it to be well
>justified and elegant.  

	Thank you; I'm glad to hear that.

>Unfortunately, there's the matter of the
>complications this will create when it comes to creating and using
>ballots.  

	Yes. Again, I don't consider it to be a "first wave" Condorcet method.
The ballot interface should be electronic, e.g. a touch screen. When you
get right down to it, it is not necessary to input rankings and rating
separately. If it is easier, one can just have the voters input ratings,
and infer the rankings from the ratings. Getting voters to rate candidates
on a scale from 0 to 100 shouldn't be terribly hard... about as hard as
using an ATM, perhaps.

>Perhaps over time I'll come to appreciate CWP more and think
>it's worth the trouble, but for now I remain partial to margins.

	Okay... Let me try to make the case that margins has a significant
strategy problem. Actually, it's a big topic, so I'll do it in a separate
post.

>>3. Whether to use an anti-strategy measure (candidate withdrawal option
>>(CWO), CWP, AERLO/ATLO, iterative procedure, etc.)

>I'm not about to advocate AERLO or ATLO, largely for the reasons you've 
>already mentioned.  I also feel that CWO would give too much power to 
>candidates.
>What do I propose?  I'll briefly reiterate an idea I presented to this 
>list some time ago: Make runners-up matter.  One modest example would be 
>that the bylaws of an organization could state that when an officer 
>becomes incapacitated, the runner-up will assume the role until 
>re-election or the officer is able to serve again.  This might dissuade 
>people from (some) insincere ranking and truncation.  Ranked Pairs could 
>be used to find the social ranking.

	I'm not sure that this would have a strong anti-strategic effect. Also, I
worry that it may increase the incentive for political assassination.
>
my best,
James
http://fc.antioch.edu/~james_green-armytage/voting.htm