[EM] Re: IRV vs Plurality

[Adam Tarr]

Chris Benham wrote:

>For a start I think all  good  election methods  should allow and be able 
>to handle  the voter fully ranking all the candidates. On being offered a 
>voter's full ranking a method should either respond :
[snip]
>but  NOT
>  (c) " I can't handle that and I won't accept it. I  will only accept 
> some arbitary number of rankings/grades which is less than the number of 
> candidates, so you deal with that and then I am going to 
> pretend  that  this arbitary number represents your true number 
> of  preference levels"  (take a bow, Approval and MCA).

While MCA as it is typically presented does fail this criteria 
(universality?), there's no reason you couldn't implement MCA with 4, or 5, 
or 1000 slots.  The candidate with the largest a first place majority 
wins.  If no candidate has a majority of first place votes, then the 
candidate with the largest majority of first and second place votes 
wins.  Repeat until you find a majority, or reach the last rank (at which 
point you elect the candidate on the most ballots).  This sort of makes MCA 
into a cross between Bucklin and approval - Bucklin with equal rankings 
allowed.

>My three most fundamental standards:

Those are good ones to go by.  Clone independence is also important in my 
book.  Of course, ranked pairs and beatpath pass all three, plus 
monotonicity and clone independence.

-Adam