Normative principles of elections- Condorcet and Irrelevance of Alternatives (plus a brief hello and an STV clarification)

[David Catchpole]

On Wed, 26 Aug 1998, Mike Ositoff wrote:

I guess it's hard to always have everyone agreeing, but I believe the
criterion of irrelevant alternatives actually does allow for the criteria
below.

The fact is that if a Condorcet winner exists, that winner
satisfies IA, and vice versa. This is a good point about Condorcet,
in case people are just being defensive without provocation.

I personally disagree with the vagueness of just plain "majority rule", 
believing that more focused principles of majority rule need to be
developed. As for the concept of strategy- IA has a large-scale
positive effect on the behaviour of actors in an election.

I would appreciate it if you gave me examples of IA contradicting other
ubiquitous criteria, as I am a relative newcomer to the "field"; however, I
believe that the concept of IA itself is a particularly dominant one- that
the outcome of the election reflects the values of the electorate 
independent of the presence of any losing candidates.


> I'm always interested in suggestions about flaws, including this
> one, but I have to admit that I've never known what "normative"
> means. But as for principles that (almost) everyone can agree on,
> we Condorcet advocates base our whole advocacy on such principles:
> 
> Majority rule
> Getting rid of the lesser-of-2-evils problem (LO2E)
> Avoiding the need for defensive strategy
> 
> (The last 2 are the same, really, and both are closely
> related to the first)
> 
> ***
> It would be good to comply with IIAC (Irrelevant Alternatives Critrerion),
> but it isn't possible, at least not without giving up other
> more important properties.
> 
> ***
> 
> Mike Ossipoff
> 
> 
>