[EM] Re: IRV-P. Another name for Condorcet?

[Jobst Heitzig]

Hi folks!

I never liked naming things after people because (1) it is almost always
questionable whether the person getting the credit has deserved it and
(ii) such names don't tell anything about the thing. As we all know, a
"Condorcet" method was already described, studied, and applied by Ramon
Llull (Raymond Lully) 500 years before Condorcet studied such methods.

So I appreciate this discussion which will perhaps lead us to some more
descriptive terminology. Perhaps "IRV-P" is not the worst proposal.
After all, a traditional runoff usually is a pairwise comparison, so in
that respect the term fits the pairwise methods quite well. However, a
runoff also is something applied *after* some first tally, whereas most
pairwise methods consider all pairs at the same time at the start, sort
them in any way and only then apply some iterative procedure. So in that
respect, the term "runoff" seems misleading. Perhaps one could replace
"instant" by "simultaneous" or "concurrent", or some synonym of these
which begins with an "I" :-) One could also use "Independent Runoffs
Voting -- Pairs" in order to indicate that the runoffs are not in
sequence but at the same time between all pairs...

Jobst