[EM] Fw: borda count
Steve Eppley
seppley at alumni.caltech.edu
Sat Nov 6 17:07:07 PST 2004
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
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