Condorcet(x( ))

[Lucien Saumur]

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

>About the use of x = .5 instead of 0:
>
>True, if you rank 2 candidates together in last place, or if you
>don't rank either of them, then you're voting against them in the maximum
>way: You're voting everyone else over them. _That's_ the sense in which
>you've indicated that you want a maximum count against them.
>
>What you haven't done is indicate that you meant to rank each of them
>over the other. As I said, it would be counting something that the voter
>hasn't said. Harmless in, say Copeland, but not so harmless in a method,
>like Condorcet, that counts votes-against.
>
>Most assuredly there's something wrong with x = .5 in Condorcet for
>last-ranked or unranked pairs of alterntaives: Condorcet would lose its
>properties of getting rid of the lesser-of-2-evils problem, getting
>rid of the need for defensive strategy, and protecting majority rule.

          I do not understand what you mean by
vote-against.

          I understand Condorcet to compare each candidate
to every other candidate. Whether you count the unranked
candidates as having obtained .0 or .5 vote against each
other does not change the result of the comparison.

          Example: if 85 of 100 voters do not rank A and B
while 10 voters prefer A to B and 5 voters prefer B to A,
the result will be the same (i.e. A beats B) whether we
consider that A beats B 10 to 5 or (10 + 42.5) to (5 +
42.5).

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