[EM] SciAm article. Advantages of many candidates in poll.
Ernest Prabhakar
drernie at mac.com
Fri Feb 20 10:31:02 PST 2004
On Feb 20, 2004, at 12:38 AM, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote:
> I hope .. that article is in the print issue of Sci Am too.
Yes, it is. I agree with you - the overall tone was very positive and
useful, and will encourage to people consider Condorcet-compliant
(Majority Rule) methods.
> Why did the Sci Am authors only mention Copeland? They may have been
> running out of space, as suggested by the brevity of their description
> of it. Also, Copeland and Black are the only pairwise-coiunt methods
> that have gotten much acceptance and discussion among the academics.
Yeah, when I actually read the article myself, I realized that it was
really advocating Condorcet, and the other issues were purely
parenthetical.
> Sure, Copeland itself isn't a solution, but the article still
> accomplishes a lot just by introducing and recommending pairwise-count
> to Sci Am's wide audience.
Absolutely. And we should encourage such efforts.
> The article is "Chapter One", the first installment and big
> breakthrough in useful voting system discussion in a big publication.
> Obviously Chapter Two, the essential matter of how to solve circular
> ties in a way that continues to protect majorilty rule, remains to be
> published. But the article is still a valuable start, and is a lot
> better than nothing.
Plus, I think that the article makes a solid argument that circular
ties are a relatively rare occurrence in public elections. I do think
it is important to have a circular good tiebreaker, but frankly that is
something mostly of interest to academics. For the bulk of voters,
the only important thing is to realize Condorcet-compliant methods are
better than alternatives like IRV. Hopefully the 'experts' will
provide a reasonable tiebreaker when it actually comes to public
implementation.
> By the way, another academic author surprised me by advocating
> Condorcet's method in an article in the Op-Ed section of the
> Washington Post, for June 21, 1992. The title of the article, which,
> it seems to me, was at the top of the page in that section, was "The
> Last May Be First: Factoring Perot". Or maybe "Factoring Perot: The
> Last May Be First". That was remarkable. Academic advocacy of
> Condorcet's method to the publc is something that I've never heard of
> before or since.
Wow, that's awesome. I plan to create some links to that on my MPV
page, once I try to address some of the issues Steve Eppley raised.
Cheers,
- Ernie P.
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