[EM] Another SciAm voting mention

[Rob LeGrand]

EMers,

The July 2004 issue of Scientific American prints three letters in
response to the article "The Fairest Vote of All" from the March issue.
One is from Philip Macklin, Terry Bouricius and Rob Richie, CVD folks, who
criticize the article's dismissal of IRV (the authors claimed IRV might
have given the same pathological result as top-two runoff in the 2002
French election) and give the usual IRV objection to Condorcet.  They
present the example

40:A>C>B
45:B>C>A
15:C>A>B

and argue that the IRV outcome, A, is the fairest one.  The authors of the
article reply, gently pointing out that A can hardly be the fairest
outcome when 60% prefer C to A and that IRV might indeed have elected
Chirac.  (While true, it seems unlikely to me that IRV would have
eliminated Jospin before Le Pen in the real election since most leftist-
party voters would have voted Jospin over Chirac and Le Pen.)

Another letter recommends Approval, and the third one explains how a
ranked-ballot Condorcet system might encourage insincere voting by some
real-world voters.  Unfortunately, the authors' response dismisses the
concern as relevant only to Borda ("rank-order voting") and not to
Condorcet ("true majority rule"), which is an unfortunate simplification.

=====
Rob LeGrand, psephologist
rob at approvalvoting.org
Citizens for Approval Voting
http://www.approvalvoting.org/


		
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