[EM] Re: Diana's Proposed method of cycle resolution:

[Alex Small]

Donald Davison said:
> A circular tie should be regarded as a warning bell to the fact that the
> lower choices in this election are flawed and should not be trusted.
> Most likely this flaw was caused by the voters not being informed well
> enough to make good lower choices.

So uninformed voters lead to circular ties?  A while back Adam gave a very
good geometric argument that if you have 2 distinct issue categories (as
opposed to the same old left-right pissing contest), an electorate of
well-informed and rational voters can give rise to a cycle.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/election-methods-list/message/9857

Now, we can debate over the right way to approach an electorate divided in
such manner as to give rise to a cycle.  But there are perfectly good
reasons why some well-informed voters might have the preference

Libertarian>Democrat>Republican

while others have

Democrat>Republican>Libertarian

and still others have

Republican>Libertarian>Democrat.

Heuristically, the first category might be people who are fiscally
conservative and socially liberal but see social issues as more important
than economic issues.  The second category might correspond to liberals
who see the Libertarians as simply too extreme (and God knows that
Libertarian candidates campaigning to legalize ferrets while dressed as
druids do nothing to dispel that notion).  The third category might
correspond to conservatives who see the libertarians as a good compromise,
since Libertarians are fiscally conservative.

Of course, Adam's example provides a more rigorous and general argument
for why cycles will arise when voters are well informed.  But the above
shows the basic idea.

Now, I freely grant that if political debate sticks to the same old
cluster fuck of left vs. right, cycles would indicate uninformed voters. 
Only an idiot would have the preference Nader>Bush>Gore or
Bush>Nader>Gore, at least if we restrict discussion to the left vs. right
pissing contest.  But once we break out of that paradigm and look at
candidates as multi-faceted, anything is possible.

> Anyway, in my school of thinking, almost all choices are suspect and the
> policy should be to use as few as possible.  This is one of the reasons
> I favor Irving because Irving will use less lower choices than any other
> multi choice method.  Consider the following election:  45 Axx    45 Bxx
> 10 Cxx
>
> Condorcet will use all the lower choices.  Irving will only use ten
> percent of the lower choices.  Using less is best.

Less information good!  More information bad!

OK...



Alex