Insincere Equal Rankings

[Mike Ositoff]

I'm writing about this because there was a posting a while back,
in the archives, which said or implied that the incentive to
insincerely rank one's top choices equally is 1) a serious
problem of Condorcet(EM); & 2) a problem peculiara to Condorcet(EM).

So thank you, Markus, for recently pointing out that Tideman's
& Schultz's methods both share that problem.
At least when they use votes-against, without which it isn't
possible to have some properties that many or most of us have
agreed that we want.

It seems to me that that problem is an inevitable accompaniment
to a votes-against count. But only in a chaotic election with
no 1-dimensional political spectrum & no Condorcet winner.

That's why I don't consider it a problem for Condorcet(EM), or
Tideman or Schulze. As I used to point out, When there's a Condorcet
winner, and a majority of the voters have ranked that Condorcet
winner over everything they like less (No method can help voters
who don't support a compromise they need), then those less-liked
alternatives will have a majority against them. The Condorcet
winner won't have a majority against it unless supporters of
those less-liked alternatives attempt the risky, devious
offensive strategy of order-reversal. There's no need for
members of that majority to insincerely rank anyone equal,
barring a vicious fratricidal subcycle among the candidates whom
they prefer to that less-liked set. (Tideman & Schulze may or may
not avoid that fratricide problem depending on whether the
subcycle is in a near clone set, or the type of similar 
situation that Markus described).

That's why I say that incentive to insincerely rank one's favorite
candidates equal isn't really a problem with Condorcet(EM).

I just wanted to answer these objections that I found in the
archives. I claim that Smith//Condorcet(EM) & Condorcet(EM)
are good enough, because they avoid the gross problems that
plague today's voting, even if there are even better methods.
And they seem to me the simplest of the really good methods.

Mike Ossipoff