[EM] Condorcet for public proposals - IMV

[Ernest Prabhakar]

Hello,

On Jan 31, 2004, at 6:48 PM, Niemzinski at ecybermind.net wrote:

> Quoting Adam Tarr <atarr at purdue.edu>:
>
>> While these are certainly accurate names for the method, Ernest's 
>> goal was
>> to come up with a name that catchy and that instantly gives some idea 
>> of
>> the method to a layman.  "Instant Matchup Voting" does this job 
>> pretty well
>> - it might not be exactly what I would have picked , but it's a very 
>> good
>> choice.
>
> My preference would be "Pair Competition Ranking" or something 
> similiar.
> Instant makes sense in the Runoff context but not in the Condorcet 
> context,

Um, could you elaborate on why Instant doesn't make sense to you?   As 
a Condorcetist, I do think of multi-candidate elections as if they were 
in fact a series of one-on-one matchups.  Doing Condorcet via ranked 
ballots is a way of getting that effect "instantly."  I realize the 
usual view is to start from the pairwise matrix, but I consider that 
merely historic convention, and not of interest to 'the masses'. As 
Adam said, it might make sense to drop the matrix entirely in the main 
description, and just discuss wins.

> Voting isn't the focus of tabulation methods, and Matchup would tend 
> to be
> interpreted as being synonomous with "equivalent" which is not the 
> intended
> meaning.

I'm sorry, I don't understand that sentence at all.  Could you perhaps 
be more explicit.  To me, voting is what the voters do when they create 
ballots.  Each ballot reflects the results of a series of matchups.  
That is, I'm trying to describe this algorithm in terms of how the 
*voters* perceive it, not in terms of how the *counters* calculate it.  
  My impression is that the people on this list tend to be 
algorithmists, so they have a very different perspective than 'normal 
'voters.

While the term "Instant Matchup Voting" may not be immediately obvious 
to everyone, the point is to tie the name to a description that seems 
intuitively meaningful, so that after people hear the description it 
makes sense at a conceptual level.  The other terms I've seen suggest 
are not particularly more transparent (at least to me), plus they don't 
seem to flow as naturally into a clear definition.

-- Ernie P.

P.S.  For the record, I am a marketing person, not a mathematician, 
thus I prefer a catchier name as long as it isn't blatantly inaccurate.

P.P.S. To Markus point - I'm sure there may be better technical names 
than Smith PC, and I would be happy to mention them in the footnote, 
but the point is (as Adams said) to come up with a catchy 'brand name' 
for this particular interpretation.  Which also avoids arguments about 
whether this is 'really' Smith PC.

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