[EM] SciAm article. Advantages of many candidates in poll.

[Ernest Prabhakar]

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.