tie-breaking

Steve Eppley seppley at alumni.caltech.edu
Mon Oct 14 21:18:06 PDT 1996


Though tie-breakers aren't important in large elections, I'd like to
know--for the sake of committee voting--if we can do better than
//Plurality without adding too much complexity to the definition.

I like a tie-breaker mentioned by Bruce in his notation: repeat the
method after eliminating all the candidates who didn't tie for 1st,
and keep repeating until one candidate is alone in 1st or all the
remaining candidates are tied.  (If the latter condition is what
stops the iterations, then //Plurality-ext//Random or some other
tie-breaker would be invoked.)  I think Bruce's syntax would refer
to this as [Condorcet]. 

If this is technically a better tie-breaker than //Plurality, is it
worth the complexity for committees and legislatures to use?

---Steve     (Steve Eppley    seppley at alumni.caltech.edu)




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