[EM] Reply to Paul Kislanko

[RLSuter at aol.com]

In a message dated 10/6/04, kislanko at airmail.net writes:

> You may not take it that Paul has conceded anything
> since nobody's ever answered the original question.
>
> 5 of 9 voters voted C>A. 
>
> Paul's question is how can anyone justify A's win.
>
> No one has addressed that. Until they do, ad hominems are
> just an example of how unlikely it will be to convince voters
> to change election methods. >>

But in the example you cite, 7 of 9 voters voted B>C, so
how could anyone justify C's win? And 6 out of 9 voters
voted A>B, so how could anyone justify B's win?

The experts all agree that there is no perfect voting method
that will satisfy everyone in every conceivable case, so the
goal must be to find the method that will result in the most
satisfaction overall compared with other methods.

One question this list doesn't address very much is how
often the kinds of cycles that bother you (and everyone else)
would occur in actual voting situations. It's an empirical question
for which there is now very little data, because Condorcet
voting has rarely if ever been used in any elections of public
officials, and it has been used only slightly less rarely in other
kinds of elections (e.g., in elections held by nongovernmental
organizations).

Advocates of instant runoff voting, which has been used in enough
public elections to provide some useful data, argue in response to
criticisms of it that there have been few if any instances where the
theoretical problems it poses have actually been a factor in elections.

It may well be that if Condorcet voting were used in a variety of
public elections over an extended period, over 99% of cases if
not 100% would have true Condorcet winners and no cycles.
That is, in each case the winning candidate would be prefered
over every other candidate if matched one to one. If that were
the result, then I suspect Condorcet would be widely preferred
over other methods and you would not have any problems with it.

But unfortunately, the empirical data needed to fairly evaluate
different voting methods in real world elections just doesn't
exist right now. That's a problem I wish the participants on
this list would devote more attention to. Has anyone proposed
any promising ways to test different methods empirically? Has
any such testing been done, and if so, what have been the
results?

-Ralph Suter