[EM] Fw: borda count

[Steve Eppley]

Hi,

Paul K wrote, in part:
> James Gilmour wrote, in part:
>> But I agree with Steve's comment in his second message
>> of today.  Why on earth would anyone want to discuss Borda?  
>> It is fundamentally flawed and should be consigned to
>> the museum of electoral science, no matter what 
>> Don Saari may say.
> 
> As I have attempted to point out before, criteria such
> as "clone independence" do not come into play when what
> is being discussed by a group is "which of these four 
> options should the group select as its primary?"
> There's no way to "nominate clones", since there is 
> no "nomination process" involved that could introduce
> "clones."
-snip-

True, but lack of clone independence is not Borda's 
only problem, as the anecdote about the vote to hire 
1 of 4 economists showed.

And I speculate that in most decisions, the set of 
potential alternatives includes many clones.

But I accept Paul's point.  There might be some decision,
somewhere, where Borda would be a good voting method.
On the other hand, in that presumably small set of 
decisions, some "cardinal ratings" voting method 
might be even better than Borda.

--Steve