Condorcet Truncation Example -- Correction

[Hugh Tobin]

A typo in the last long paragraph of my last post is corrected below:
"at" should have been "and".

> This means, that it won't be possible to determine the
> Condorcet Criterion winner due to the opinion of the voters
> even if no voter votes tactically. This means that the Condorcet
> Criterion method won't work.
>

No, what you say is true only if some voters do vote tactically.  If
they omit choices in some pairwise races we may reasonably assume they
are truly indifferent in those races.  Indeed, this is more likely to be
true of voters who cast partial rankings than it is to be true of voters
who do not come to the polls at all.  
It has been pointed out on this list that no system can guarantee that
all rankings will be sincere, so it is not a sufficient argument against
Condorcet to say that we cannot be certain that each voter's ranking
expresses his or her true preferences.  Prior postings have investigated
circumstances in which insincere voting might occur in Condorcet,
despite the substantial risks involved.  Others have argued that
tactical voting strategies are easily defeated in Condorcet; I have
questioned the logic of these arguments and have suggested that
order-reversal might work in certain cases (similar to your most recent
example of reversal by a 40% plurality).  However, as no other system
guarantees sincere votes, I do not see that the possibility of reversal
in Condorcet justifies using a different system that may fail to elect
the Condorcet winner even when there is no significant amount of
tactical voting.  In your recent example, if the expectation of
order-reversal by the plurality forces the other wing to vote for the
center in first place, this is the same type of lesser-evil choice that
may be forced upon voters in other systems.  Because order-reversal
strategy would probably have to be coordinated and publicized in order
to be effective, and because it is the type of cynical manipulation that
might lose support among marginal voters, I think it would be unusual
and
that in most cases we could be reasonably confident that rankings would
be generally sincere, at least in the US, where party loyalty is weak
and voters tend to think independently.  In a country where most voters
either have no second preferences or are willing to subordinate them
without question to direction from party leaders, as you suggest, I
agree that Condorcet would have fewer benefits.

-- Hugh Tobin