Housekeeping Letter

[New Democracy]

New Year Greetings to all members of the Election Methods List,

     I wish all of you a great new year. I have some housekeeping left over
from 1996 - a number of pending questions put to me that I am willing to
answer again at this time - being as I am wearing my Math Hat today.

The questions are as follows:

   ONE: Why do I want the Coombs' points to be equal to the number of voters?
   TWO: Why do I like to drop candidates?
 THREE: Why do I think the voters will only make one Condorcet selection?

QUESTION ONE answer: If all the voters are equally represented in the
Coombs' vote then the Coombs' vote will be equal to the number of voters.
Equality in representation is "relevant to democracy". If the Coombs' tally
is less than the number of voters that means that some voters are not
represented in deciding which candidate to drop. If the Coombs' tally is
more than the number of voters that means some voters are represented with
more weight than others. Some voters could have two or three or more times
weight than others.
     The Coombs' tally and the number of voters must balance - something
like double entry bookkeeping. Otherwise we could have results something
like having more votes cast in an election than there were voters. If we
had an election in which two hundred voters went to the polls but three
hundred votes were cast we would be correct in saying that something was
amiss. Our interest in having the votes cast be equal to the number of
voters would be more than being "aesthetically pleasing on the surface".
The same is true with the Coombs' vote - it is a question of being honest.

QUESTION TWO: "To Drop or Not to Drop - that is the question". We are only
going to have one winner in a single seat election - the rest of the
candidates are going to be dropped. An election is not a social event in
which everyone is welcome to stay as long as possible and no one's feeling
are going to be hurt - most of the candidates are going to be dropped. Some
will be dropped before the general election by the instrument called the
primary election. Of the ones that survive to the general election most
will be dropped on the first tally because most single seat elections
produce a winner with a majority on the first tally. This leaves the
contests that have no clear winner - but even at this point most of these
candidates will be losers.
     The sooner we detect one of these losers and drop him the sooner we
reveal the winner. How are we to detect one of the losers? In these unclear
contests the run-off people will drop the last candidate of the first tally
- the Coombs' people will drop the winner of the last set of selections -
the Approval Voting and Broda people will not drop anyone until they
declare a winner(with no majority)then they drop everyone else. The
Condorcet people will do the most dropping of candidates. In each of their
pairing run-offs the balance of the candidates are dropped. When they have
a circular tie some of the solutions require dropping candidates. And when
they finally declare a winner they also drop everyone else.
     I am willing to consider other methods of detecting one of the losing
candidates. Are there other methods besides run-off and Coombs that try to
pick one of the losers?

QUESTION THREE Answer: I have claimed a number of times that in a Condorcet
election most of the people will only make one selection - I still hold the
same belief - belief is the key word here - I have no proof. "The proof of
the pudding will be in the eating". I do not favor the Condorcet method but
I would like to see the results of as many election years as possible where
Condorcet is being used. Does anyone have that information? Not data from
some parlor game but a real election that has been held for a number of
years. Until I see some proof I can only go on my logic.
     My logic says that even if Condorcet is voted in as the single seat
election method of a voting area there will be people who did not vote for
it. If these people decide to continue not to favor Condorcet they can do
that by only making one selection. Can Condorcet survive if forty-five
percent of the voters only make one selection? A Condorcet person should be
able to answer this question better than I could. But - my logic also tells
me that additional voters will begin to only make one selection when they
realize that their other selections are being used to help some other
candidate succeed while their first selection is still a contender. I have
stated this before.
     If Condorcet ever gets voted in someplace I would like to be able to
observe the results over the years - it would be "very interesting".

     Allow me to go back to the Primary election for a moment. What is the
position of Condorcet people regarding the primary election? I would think
that you people would be outraged because some of the candidates dropped
have more support than some candidates that are held over. My view is that
we should not have Primary elections - but that is a different topic.

Donald,