[EM] Withdrawal is merely parts of a Condorcet election.

Instant Runoff Voting supporter donald at mich.com
Sat Dec 30 06:27:02 PST 2000


Greetings,

     I now say candidate withdrawal is merely parts of a Condorcet
election, or to be more exact, it will be only two pairings of a Condorcet
three candidate election.

     Tom's example was:  48 B,  27 NG,  20 GN,  5 G
     The first IRV election is one pairing:  48 B vs 47 N
     Another pairing is Nader's withdrawal:  48 B vs 52 G
     We now need one more pairing to make this a full Condorcet election.
Suppose candidate Bush decides to withdraw? (He has as much right to
withdraw as any candidate.) His withdrawal will give us the third pairing:
27 N vs 25 G
     We now have a full Condorcet election.

     Now the first point I would like to make is to those of you who
support the policy of pairing. And that is, you know that you should
consider all the pairings and not to merely pick one to determine the
winner. The method, candidate withdrawal, determines the winner based on
only one pairing, this is a no no.

     The second point is that this example resulted in a circular tie, Bush
wins over Nader, Nader wins over Gore, Gore wins over Bush.
     Maybe candidate withdrawal needs the voters to vote in a circular
pattern in order for a different candidate to be elected. If so, then the
method is merely telling us that a circular tie exists. Selecting only one
pairing to determine the winner is not the best circular tie solution.
     The Candidate Withdrawal method cannot be trusted to elect the correct
candidate.

     In closing I would like to say that it is not a good policy to use
names of known people in an example. The question of which is the best
method should not be linked to which is the best candidate.

Regards, Donald Davison - Host of New Democracy,  www.mich.com/~donald

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   |                         Q U O T A T I O N                         |
   |  "Democracy is a beautiful thing,                                 |
   |       except that part about letting just any old yokel vote."    |
   |                            - Age 10                               |
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