[EM] Symmetry and Condorcet

[Forest Simmons]

On Thu, 16 Jan 2003, Alex Small wrote:

>
> Anyway, after exploring what happens when we require election methods to
> respect symmetry, I'm forced to conclude that symmetry isn't a very useful
> criterion.
>

When stabbing around in the dark you can use symmetry as a guide for where
to start looking. Some symmetries are more valuable than others, and all
else being equal, I'll take a method that respects symmetry over one that
does not.  But "all else being equal" is a big proviso.

By the way, it looks like that if we allow adding and subtracting of
"symmetry" in the 3 candidate fully ranked case, we can always get down to
a residue of two adjacent factions (i.e. a single adjacent swap converts
one into the other)

Could we consider this a canonical reduction of some type?

Forest

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