[EM] Fwd: Is Condorcet The Turkey?

[Forest Simmons]

On Thu, 19 Jun 2003, Dave Ketchum wrote:

> On Wed, 18 Jun 2003 15:00:34 -0700 (PDT) Forest Simmons wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, 17 Jun 2003, Dave Ketchum wrote:
> >
> > ...
> >
> >
> >>To me Condorcet is about as simple as it gets - list the candidates in
> >>order, starting with your favorite and continuing until you care not which
> >>of the remainder wins (which can only happen if none of those you do list
> >>wins).  ...
> >
> >
> > Listing candidates in order is not that easy for most folks.  Just
> > figuring out who to put first is a major effort, hence all of the TV
> > campaigning to attract the undecided swing voters.  In countries where
> > ranked ballots are used, most voters depend heavily on recommendations
> > from unions, parties, or favorites.
>
> Mentioning campaigning is a distraction - it does try to influence voters,
> but the current topic is how voters shall express their desires, once they
> have decided.

I agree that we are talking specifically about how hard it is for the
voter to vote under Approval compared with Condorcet, but to put that
difficulty in perspective, we need to understand why voters tend to copy
union recommendations, copy ballots of their more politically active
friends, etc.

Relative to the over all difficulty of the entire process, the difference
between deciding whom to approve and how to rank is minor.

"Approve everybody you like better than the most popular candidate
(inclusive if you like him/her better than his/her most likely rival)" is
a good rule of thumb that can be easily adapted to any specific case.

For this rule you don't even have to decide on a favorite.  Spoze that
you like candidates A,B,C,and D better than the most popular candidate E,
and that B is the second most popular candidate. You just approve A,B,C,
and D without deciding which of these is your favorite, and you leave E,
F, G, H, etc. unapproved without deciding which of them is your least
favorite.

On the other hand, if candidate A, say, is so despicable that you cannot
support him in good conscience, you can limit your approval to B,C,and D,
even though you do not think that A is as despicable as the most popular
candidate E.

It could turn out that, in this case, your conscience saved a Condorcet
Turkey from winning the Approval election.

In a nutshell, that's the "Condorcet Turkey" point of view.

Forest