[EM] Replies to Saumur

[Lucien Saumur]

In an article, dfb at bbs.cruzio.com (Mike Ossipoff)  writes:

>Lucien Saumur writes:
> 

>>           The voters who produce a circular tie are like
>> the car buyer who walk into a car dealership to buy a car.
>> When asked if he wants to buy a red car, the buyer says
>> that he prefer a blue car to a red  and when told that
>> there is a blue car in stock for him, he says that he
>> prefers a white car to a blue car. Finally, when he is then
>> told that there is a white car in stock for him, he says
>> that he prefers a red car to a white car.
>
>No, not necessarily. As I said, truncation--the voting of a short
>ranking, is quite common in rank-balloting elections, and can easily
>cause a circular tie, even when there's a Condorcet winne (candidate
>who'd beat each one of the others in separate 2-way races).

          I do not see how short ranking can cause a
circular tie. Short ranking means that a voter is saying:
"If my preferred candidate(s) is (are) not also preferred,
to the other candidates, by the voters, then I accept
whatever other candidate the other voters will choose. If
every voter short-ranks and votes for only one candidate,
then this electorate will have converted the preferential
ballot election into a FPTP election. The FPTP winner is
also the Condorcet winner since he has beaten every other
candidate, in a pairwise contest.

__________________________________________
          aa447 at FreeNet.Carleton.CA
          http://www.igs.net/~lsaumur/