[EM] The Coming California Single Seat Election

[Alex Small]

Rob Speer said:
> This part confuses me. I assume this is the same as counting an equal
> ranking as "half a vote for each", which has come up a lot, when I
> always thought of an equal ranking as simply not changing anything
> between the two candidates.
>
> Since most Condorcet methods I'm familiar with use margins, there is no
> need to keep separate tallies - so separate tallies are "necessitated"
> only for Winning Votes methods, right?

Well, since Condorcet is (to the best of my knowledge) never used in
public elections and rarely used in private groups, I don't know whether
the 0.5 votes each is a standard convention or not.  It wouldn't change
the margins, so it would be applicable to margins methods.  Certainly it
would be necessary for winning votes methods.

However, in a public election I suspect people would like to have as much
information as possible to verify the absence of shenanigans, or maybe
just to analyze the results and see what public opinion was.  In that case
the count of A>B and B>A would still be desirable, since it would tell how
many people were indifferent between A and B.  A and B's campaign managers
would want to know that so they could figure out how to differentiate
their candidates from the crowd the next time they seek office.  Since it
only adds a factor of 2, I don't see it as a big deal.

> I've encountered people who have heard of Condorcet but are scared off
> because they think the voter has to vote explicitly in each pairwise
> contest. Is this just misinterpretation, or deliberate FUD by IRV
> supporters?

I don't know enough "standard" IRV rhetoric to know if this is deliberate.
 And I don't know enough about Donald to know whether he truly believes
this.  Only Donald can tell you what Donald's understanding of Condorcet
is.  But I do recall Donald saying something similar in the aftermath of
the French Presidential election, in regards to the number of pairwise
contests that voters would have to participate in being quite large.

Then again, maybe Donald is just interested in expanding our freedom of
choice.  It has been pointed out on this list that voters may be better
off ranking two candidates equal in some Condorcet elections.  Maybe
there's also a strategic advantage from intransitive rankings, and Donald
wants voters to have access to that option by allowing them to vote A>B,
B>C, C>A.

Who knows?



Alex