[EM] IRV's "majority winner". What if we let the people choose?

[Adam Tarr]

James Gilmour wrote:

> > >49  A<C<B
> > >48  B<C<A
> > >  3  C<B<A
>
>James Green-Armytage replied:
> >       Well, if the votes were sincere to begin with, then it
> > is axiomatic that C will win a runoff election against B.
>
>But if you did decide this by a separate run-off election, I should not be 
>surprised to find large numbers of voters changing their preferences in 
>that run-off election, and in so doing, reject the CW.

You realize the sophistry in that argument, don't you?  You're essentially 
saying that those preferences shouldn't be respected, since the people 
wouldn't actually express them if they had thought they mattered.

>Imagine a "real-life" scenario: Bush, Gore, Nader.  Would we really have 
>had four years of President Nader?

OK, explain to me how, in your "real life" scenario, every Bush and Gore 
supporter liked Nader more than the other guy.  Every one of them!

If you're going to transpose this into a "real-life" scenario, then pick 
someone who would actually be perceived as a moderate, in between Bush and 
Gore, such as John McCain.

>This is about more than voting arithmetic and measures for identifying 
>"the most representative candidate".  It brings in systems of values which 
>are expressed in different dimensions from those used to measure 
>representivity.

I don't understand this.  Are you trying to say that people might not vote 
in a way that pairwise counting measures meaningfully?  If so, could you 
justify that?