[EM] Condorcet for public proposals - IMV

[Adam Tarr]

Here are some suggestions (really, only two suggestions, but one of them 
pops up in a few places):

>  In the unlikely event of a tie (where no candidate wins all their 
> matches) the tied candidate with the fewest votes against them wins.

I think calling this situation a "tie" only generates confusion and makes 
the method seem weak.  Just saying "In the unlikely event where no 
candidate wins all their matches..." seems fine.

>Instant Matchup Voting
>The formal procedure for IMV has five standard phases, plus three 
>tiebreaking phases:

In keeping with my suggestion to avoid referring to cyclic ambiguities as 
ties... "five standard phases, and three more phases in certain rare cases"

>3. Pairwise Matrix
>The results from all the ballots is summed up in what is called a 
>'pairwise matrix', where the rows indicate votes -for- a candidate, and 
>the columns indicate votes -against- a candidate.

I think the pairwise matrix step you show should be moved entirely to the 
"notes" section.  In the step before, you showed how to break a vote down 
into its matchups.  In the step after, you show what to do with the vote 
totals.  All that the pairwise matrix is, is a way to display results.  It 
confuses the casual viewer and takes them away from the general flow of how 
Condorcet works (which you did a great job describing up to that part, by 
the way).  If you leave this in the body, you'll lose a lot of people who 
were following you just fine up to there.

>6. First-round ties

I'd call this, "procedure when no majority winner exists" or somesuch.

>8. Second-round ties
>If two or more candidates have the least number of people voting against 
>them (within statistical uncertainties[6]), these then form a second-round 
>tie. If there is no alternative mechanism available[7], the winner is 
>picked at random from within the second-round tie.

I would just call this "ties" as oppose to second-round ties.  This is (in 
the context of plain Condorcet) an actual tie, as oppose to what we were 
looking at before.