[EM] Bad Condorcet winners?

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

My 2 main points about the Condorcet badexample apply here:

1. The voter median will be a popular & crowded place, and if you think
the only candidate there will be someone who is despised by 97% of the
voters, it's very much to your advantage to convince someone else to
run, another voter median centrist. By the way, "centrist" can be
easily misunderstood. I think we're merely using it as shorthand for
"voter median". Now, in the media, "centrist" is taken to mean someone
who is between the Democrat & the Republican, at the media-defined
"center", regardless of where the voter median really is.

So it's implausible to just one candidate, someone despised by 97%
of the voters, with the voter median position all to himself.

2. Aside from that, supposing that the example showed a genuine possibility 
that's likely enough to be concerned about, the occasionial
disutility isn't the important thing. The important thing is the
_average_ SU. That's what determines your expectation in some future
election where we don't know who the candidates will be. Your expectation is 
better if we're going to use a voting system with a
better _average_ SU. Pairwise-count methods have all other methods
(except maybe Borda, with the assumption of sincere Borda voting)
beaten in terms of average SU. In particular, Condorcet's method
is best at electing CWs, and CWs are typically the SU maximizers.

The only way that worst-case disutility could matter: If it elects
someone so extreme that he succeeds in abolishing democracy, or
doing great irreparable harm during his administration. But remember
that we're talking about a centrist who has scandals, or a drinking
problem, or suspected but unconvicted corruption, etc. That's bad,
but it doesn't justify concern for irreparable damage or the abolitioni
of democracy.

Additionally, of course, with any method, if the voters really know
what they're doing, if their strategic estimates are good, they're
going to elect the voter median candidate, the sincere CW, anyway.
It isn't just with Condorcet that that happens. Voters are trying to
do it now with Pluralit, and they'll be trying it with whatever method
is in use. It's just that Condorcet automatically makes it easy.


Below I've copied the letter that I'm replying to.

Mike Ossipoff


>my basic "bad Condorcet" example (actually a low-utility
>Condorcet example).  It doesn't seem particularly implausible to me, but
>requires that utility include a non-policy component.  For example, the
>middle candidate could be a centrist but unpopular for other reasons.
>
>In the following example, voter ratings are used to show an
>approximation of utility.  Candidates A, B, and C are voter-rated on a
>scale of from 0-10, with 10 being the voter's favorite, and 0 the least
>favorite:
>
>Votes             Candidate (rating)
>-----     ---------------------------------
>  49%       A(10)                 B(1)  C(0)
>   3%       B(10)  A(9)                 C(0)
>  48%       C(10)                 B(1)  A(0)
>
>Without trying to make too much of the average or aggregate voter
>ratings, it seems obvious that 97% of the voters despise candidate B,
>even though B is the Condorcet winner.
>
>Bart
>

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