[EM] Re: cyclic ballots

Rob Brown rob at karmatics.com
Mon Sep 6 22:24:23 PDT 2004


To me it makes no sense to have a cyclic individual preference.  I at least 
can take comfort in knowing that Condorcet considered it non-rational (because 
he considered the fact that collective preferences can have this quality to be 
a paradox)

>From a pragmatic point of view, I think it is just a horrible idea to have a 
way of inputting such cycle preferences.  99.999% of the people would just be 
confused by why in the world would anyone want to do such a thing, and I can't 
imagine an easy to use non-confusing interface.  I'd guess that the only 
possible people who would want it would be voting geeks who just enjoy 
contriving situations where it might make sense....and that doesn't seem worth 
the extra effort to convince people to change to such a system.  It enough of 
a challenge trying to get people to do something better than plurality.




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