Truncation with Condorcet

[Blake Cretney]

--

On Fri, 7 Aug 1998 04:00:54    Mike Ositoff wrote:
>On Thu, 6 Aug 1998, Blake Cretney wrote:
>
>> Why would anyone ever sincerely truncate a ballot under
>> Condorcet?  Wouldn't it make much more sense to fill
>> in all the other candidates randomly.  After all, this
>> can only help you're candidate, and if you consider
>> the others to be equal, there's no risk.
>Lots of reasons why people truncate non-strategically.
>
>Maybe someone hasn't heard anything about any but a few 
>candidates. It doesn't help his favorite(s) to rank lower
>choices (it doesn't hurt them either). So, that voter 
What about this example?

24 A B C \  Sincere preference A > B=C
24 A C B /
23 B A C
29 C B A

The A 1st voters took my advice and marked the other 
candidates randomly instead of truncating.  They came 
out even.

       A    B    C
  A    X    48   71
  B    52   X    47
  C    29   53   X

Max loss
       52   53   71
A wins

Now here's what happens if they vote sincerely and 
truncate

48 A
23 B A C
29 C B A
       A    B    C
  A    X    48   71
  B    52   X    23
  C    29   29   X

Max loss
       52   48   71
B wins

So unless I've made some kind of error here, it can 
sometimes hurt to use truncation instead of my random 
fill strategy.

The question is, is there any situation where this can 
backfire?  That would give a reason not to always use 
my random fill strategy.



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