[EM] Condorcet for public proposals

[Adam Tarr]

At 12:55 PM 1/29/2004 +0100, Markus Schulze wrote:

>MinMax (aka PC) violates reversal symmetry and independence of clones.
>The Libertarian Free State Project uses MinMax to decide which state
>is the most suitable state for their purposes. Of course, independence
>of clones was not an issue when they decided to use MinMax since you
>cannot nominate e.g. 10 different New Hamshires.

Yes, but (for instance) you could nominate both north and south Dakota, 
when all Dakota advocates agree that North Dakota is the better of the two.

>Mike Ossipoff wrote (28 Jan 2004):
> > The circular
> > tie solution is what gives the method further properties and advantages,
> > beyoned CC, but maybe the pairwise-count should be the up-front offering.
> > As was suggested, that should be the main offering, and the circular tie
> > solution should be offered as a footnote.
>
>When you promote Condorcet in general and treat the concrete tie-breaker
>only in a footnote, then the following will happen:
>
>(bad things snipped)

Those are certainly true if you fail to define your tie-breaker 
altogether.  But if the nuts and bolts of the method are fully explained, 
just not emphasized, then there's no rational reason that your opponents 
could use those tactics.

For example, you have a pamphlet that talks about using a ranked ballot, 
and using the rankings to generate all the one-on-one, pairwise election 
totals.  Then say that you elect the candidate with the "best" results 
against all other candidates, adding that "generally one candidate will win 
every contest he or she is involved in."  Then, at the end of the pamphlet, 
"technical explanation of (name of method)", have a nice, well-illustrated 
description of how you work through the election (something like what Eric 
has put together for ranked pairs on his website).

The point is, you don't hide the tiebreaking procedure, you just don't 
emphasize it.  The typical man-on-the-street probably won't even think to 
ask, "what if there's a circular tie in pairwise preferences?", but if he 
does, then he's probably smart enough to understand the answer.

-Adam