[EM] Condorcet for public proposals

[Markus Schulze]

Dear Anthony,

you wrote (27 Jan 2004):
> I suggest that a definition of the condorcet election method being
> publicly proposed should be explicit about the full pairwise
> analysis, and that the possibility of a circular tie, and the
> resolution of such a circular tie should be treated like a footnote.

I don't agree with you.

For example: Suppose someone promotes Tideman's ranked pairs method.
This method satisfies Condorcet, monotonicity, independence of clones,
reversal symmetry, etc.. When he promotes only the Condorcet criterion
and treats the ranked pairs method only in a footnote then the readers
will mistakenly believe that the main reason or even the sole reason
why he promotes this method is that it satisfies Condorcet. However,
in so far as this method also satisfies monotonicity, independence of
clones, reversal symmetry, etc. this method is a very good method even
when the readers don't consider the Condorcet criterion to be important.

Therefore, instead of promoting Condorcet methods in general and
mentioning Tideman's ranked pairs method only in a footnote, I suggest
to promote Tideman's ranked pairs method in general and to mention that
this method happens to satisfy the Condorcet criterion only in a footnote.

In my opinion, the Condorcet criterion should be treated as one criterion
among many criteria. Otherwise there is the danger that when a given
reader doesn't consider the Condorcet criterion to be important then he
will consider Tideman's ranked pairs method to be completely worthless.

Markus Schulze