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

[Adam Tarr]

James Gilmour wrote:

>I am suggesting they would vote sincerely but then reject the outcome of 
>their own actions when they saw the consequences and all the evidence.  I 
>am also suggesting that if they fully understood that such outcomes were 
>possible, they would reject a voting system that could produce such an 
>outcome.

I think that such a vote could be "marketed" in a way that would make it 
relatively uncontroversial.  "In cases with no first-place majority winner, 
Condorcet chooses the compromise candidate with the broadest base of 
support."  If people can accept the Electoral College, they can surely 
accept that...

>Over here all we heard about when it came to the actual election were 
>Bush, Gore and Nader - with Nader as the spoiler, having a very small 
>percentage of the votes in a very close election.  (We heard about hanging 
>chads too, but that's another story!)

McCain was a moderate Republican (some Republicans would probably say he is 
barely a Republican at all) who lost to Bush in the primaries.  Nader, on 
the other hand, is significantly more liberal than both Bush and 
Gore.  It's hard to imagine Nader getting very many second-place votes from 
Republicans or even the more moderate Democrats, but it's fairly easy to 
imagine nearly all Bush supporters liking McCain more than Gore, and nearly 
all Gore supporters liking McCain more than Bush.

It's also not hard to imagine McCain having a fairly small base of 
first-place vote support, especially if he left the Republican party and 
ran as an independent in the general election.

>I'm not sure how people might respond in such a Condorcet election, but my 
>main point is that once they appreciate such an outcome is possible they 
>would never accept the Condorcet voting system.  There may be good 
>intellectual arguments that the 3/49/48 CW is the most representative 
>candidate of the voters, but all my political experience leads me to 
>believe that such a result would provoke a massive public outcry and 
>demands for immediate changes to the voting system.
>
>As others have appreciated, such a response operates on a different 
>dimension from that used to assess "representativity" as defined by the 
>comparisons of Condorcet, IRV, etc.  You may think this contrary, but we 
>know from political surveys that real people are quite capable of holding 
>contrary views and even mutually incompatible views.  So while they might 
>accept the CW on one dimension, they will reject the outcome of the 
>election on another dimension.  I don't have a neat definition for that 
>dimension, but it is characterised by the reactions I suggested in the two 
>different scenarios, ie accept CW if 32/35/33, but reject CW if 3/49/48.

You may be right, but I still believe that people could be convinced that 
this is the fair outcome with decent marketing.  Nobody had a majority of 
core support, so we picked the compromise choice that keeps everyone 
happy.  See, it just rolls of the tongue (or keyboard, whatever).

>Again, this response is not operating on the same dimension as that used 
>to assess representativity.  Other values in the total system of values 
>come into play and determine the response.

I'm sorry, but this choice of words still makes my head spin, even now that 
I know what you mean by it. :)

-Adam