Demorep1: Truncation. Approval.

[DEMOREP1 at aol.com]

A Condorcet major truncation example--
A 334
B 333
C 330
CB   2

2 of 999 voters made a second choice.   B wins a glorious victory and a
mighty mandate to be El Supremo by beating A 335 to 334 and by beating C 333
to 332.  Plain Condorcet supporters apparently would say this is a perfectly
OK result.  What would a public focus group think about such a result ?

I repeat--- the major competitors to plain Condorcet are top 2xN runoff (N=
Number to be elected, in common use in nonpartisan elections and in partisan
runoff primaries in 10 southern states), approval voting and instant run-off.
  All such 3 methods will probably produce a majority of all votes (MOAV)
winner (who of course may not be the Condorcet winner) or winners (where N
>1).

The realistic main competitor to head to head is plain approval voting
despite its distinct possibility in picking a candidate who might be
everyone's last or next to last choice if there were rankings.

With such majority winner alternatives, I would suggest that the public will
hardly go wild for plain Condorcet with its possibilities of plurality
winners (as with B above) and its possibilities of circular ties and its
possibilities of order reversal strategies (no matter how risky to the
candidates) (such as A telling some of his/her supporters to vote for C as a
second choice to get into a circular tie-- followed by B telling some of
his/her supporters to vote for A to defeat A's strategy-- followed by etc.
etc.). (See Mr. Tobin's comments about my 2-1-2 IRO fails example).  

Can a plain Condorcet supporter guarantee that there will not be any
strategic voting attempts made if polls show first choices to be such as
34-33-33, 49-49-2 or 49-26-25 (or with 4 candidates--- 27-26-24-23,
49-49-1-1, 49-18-17-16) ?  

Plain Condorcet elections for offices without incumbents will obviously
produce lots of candidates who will be happy to play the strategic voting
game (especially if the winner can appoint the losers to some high salary
public office if the losers tell their supporters to vote their high next
choices (especially second or third choices) for such winner).  Would this be
a form of candidate bribery ?

The obvious first question for public focus groups is- do you want an
election method for executive and judicial officers that elects a majority
winner or a minority winner ?  
It takes no great genius to guess the public's probable response.

Plain Condorcet supporters would apparently ask the question-- do you want an
election method for executive and judicial officers that elects the least
evil of the candidates ?

I repeat again-- rankings (1, 2, etc.) show only relative support and not
absolute support (such as on a +100 percent to -100 percent scale).   Many
candidates are totally unacceptable to many voters (especially for higher
power offices- U.S. President, Governors, Mayors).  

Rankings for such unacceptable candidates are basically false.  
Example- Voter D votes
1. John Q. Moderate
2. A. Hitler
3. J. Stalin
4. G. Khan
Voter D regards candidates H, S and K as unacceptable.  It is obviously
possible that a vote for H or S will elect H or S (combined with votes of
other voters- especially the first choice voters for H or S).  If H or S is
elected, then H or S will claim a people's mandate to be a "strong" ruler
(read killer- tyrant).

It is bad public policy (rather than using some much worse derogatory
adjectives) to have a candidate who may be unacceptable to a majority in a
yes/no vote to be able to be elected using plain Condorcet.

Thus, if head to head is to have a chance to be adopted as an election method
(especially against plain approval), then I suggest that it must be combined
with a majority yes/no vote. 

Here again, I suggest that executive and judicial officers be nominated for
and elected in nonpartsan elections and that such officers have no
legislative powers whatsoever (based on the very long and bloody history of
killer tyrants having combined legislative and executive and judicial powers-
e.g. Hitler who had supreme legislative, executive and judicial power in
Germany after 1934, Saddam in Iraq currently, etc. etc.).  

Election reform goes along with separation of powers reform.