[EM] Re:The "Turkey" problem and limited ranks

[Dave Ketchum]

On Fri, 23 May 2003 10:23:58 +0200 (CEST) Kevin Venzke wrote:

>  --- Chris Benham <chrisbenham at bigpond.com> a écrit : 
> 
>>Forest,
>>For the purposes of this discussion, what exactly is a "turkey" ?
>>
> 
> Just thought I should say that I don't think Forest ever used the
> term "turkey" outside of the "Re: Turkey problem" subject heading.
> I brought it up, so I'll answer.  Practically, a "turkey" is a 
> candidate who would receive very few votes in an Approval election.
> The "turkey problem" is the fear that an unknown, or even
> universally disliked candidate could be the CW if there are no
> candidates with broad support.


Seems like an unreasonable fear.

I favor permitting and using truncation, but this requires an 
understanding that those you do not list must be those you like less than 
any you do list.

Given the above understanding, a universally disliked candidate will never 
get voted better than any other candidate by any voter, and thus have no 
chance to become a Condorcet Winner.

I can picture listing an unknown candidate before one who threatens to 
vote "wrong" on abortion, but i do not see this becoming a problem unless 
many of us vote for the unknown - but you are talking of getting in 
trouble with Condorcet with a collection of candidates for which Approval 
would not have a problem.

How about a sample collection of votes to make the picture clearer.

> 
> Limited ranks address the problem only in the same way Approval does,
> but to a lesser extent as ranks increase.
> 
> Kevin Venzke
> stepjak at yahoo.fr

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   Dave Ketchum    108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY  13827-1708    607-687-5026
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