[EM] Reply to Paul Kislanko

[Dr. Ernie Prabhakar]

Hi Paul,

> Perot is the clear Condorcet winner, but that cannot be the right 
> result. If
> you replace those names with A, B, C the result looks ok.

I suspect the issue with your example is that:

> 45% Bush > Perot
> 10% Perot
> 45% Clinton > Perot

is interpreted as:

45% Bush > Perot > Clinton
10% Perot > Bush = Clinton
45% Clinton > Perot > Bush

If people had explicitly marked their ballot as above, would you still 
consider it "surprising" that Perot won?  If so, why?  Would any other 
outcome be less surprising?

If not, then is your real issue with rank-order balloting and the 
treatment of incomplete ballots, rather than Condorcet per se?

I realize that these topics can get confusing, and I'll be the first to 
admit we need to work harder on explaining these to laypeople.  At the 
same time, it would help greatly if you could be more precise about 
what exactly is bothering you.

Regards,
- Ernie P.

On Oct 11, 2004, at 12:26 PM, Paul Kislanko wrote:

> Actually, Paul understood that very well. If you recall, his original
> statement was "this is why it's so hard to explain" to non-specialists.
>
> I have something of a philosophical problem with methods that "count" 
> the
> results expressed as the pair-wise matrix, since the "winner" depends 
> upon
> which of the Condorcet methods is used to resolve cycles. This example
> bothers me, too:
>
> 1992:
> 45% Bush > Perot
> 10% Perot
> 45% Clinton > Perot
>
> Bush: - 45 45
> Perot 55 - 55
> Clinton: 45 45 -
>
> Perot is the clear Condorcet winner, but that cannot be the right 
> result. If
> you replace those names with A, B, C the result looks ok.
>
> But that's not a logical argument. More serious is the "transparency" 
> of a
> method.
>
> Especially with the current controversies about how votes are counted, 
> I
> think it is critical to be able to map "what is counted" directly back 
> to
> "what the voters put on their ballots", and since the linear 
> translation
> from from the #voters by #candidates ranked ballots matrix to the
> #candidates x #candidates pair-wise matrix is intransitive I don't 
> think you
> can convince the voters to accept that their vote was counted. (Even 
> if it
> is).
>
>> From the VOTERS perspective, if a majority of the voters are going to 
>> be
> unhappy with the outcome, the purity of a Condorcet method that makes 
> them
> unhappy is indistinguishable from the unhappiness they get from 
> Plurality.
>
> As to getting some empirical data, I think someone mentioned earlier 
> that if
> we could get ANY ranked-ballot approach approved, we'd have the raw 
> data to
> analyze different methods with. Until then, there's only the 
> proprietary
> data the pollsters collect.
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: election-methods-electorama.com-bounces at electorama.com
>> [mailto:election-methods-electorama.com-bounces at electorama.com
> ] On Behalf Of RLSuter at aol.com
>> Sent: Sunday, October 10, 2004 7:52 PM
>> To: election-methods-electorama.com at electorama.com
>> Subject: [EM] Reply to Paul Kislanko
>>
>> 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
>> ----
>> Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em
>> for list info
>>
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