[EM] pairwise as best popular name for Condorcet voting

[James Green-Armytage]

RLSuter at aol.com writes:
>Thanks, Ernie. marketing isn't my specialty, so I have to take your
>thoughts about this especially seriously. My one concern is that IRV
>has received so much attention, even if it a majority of people still
>aren't familiar with it, that I'm inclined to think that a name such as
>IRR or IRRV that will make it easier to compare Condorcet with IRV
>would be better and that while "true majority voting" would otherwise
>be better still, that term could cause problems with IRV fans and
>supporters of the Center of Voting and Democracy who I think we
>need to be on as friendly terms with as possible. Instead of ignoring
>them and dealing directly with the general public, I think it would
>be better to challenge IRV fans to publicly discuss/debate the
>question of which method is best. In any case, whenever we do
>approach the public, there will likely be at least a few people who
>are familiar with IRV, so I don't think we can avoid discussing it
>and comparing it with Condorcet.

I like "majority voting" better than IRRV. If you want to imitate the CVD,
I'd actually suggest that "majority voting" is more of the kind of vague
and brashly positive euphemism which they would be inclined to come up
with themselves. Also, I wouldn't expect that if we called Condorcet
"IRRV" that IRV fans would suddenly be more open to it. Also, if any IRV
person says that Condorcet shouldn't be called "majority voting" because
IRV can also stake that claim, it is not at all hard to argue that
Condorcet does a much better job of satisfying majority rule, in that when
the Condorcet and IRV winners differ, a majority prefers the Condorcet
winner. So, if you really see the need to get euphemistic, "majority
voting" is pretty good. But I still think that pairwise voting sounds
nice. It's a new term for people, sure, but it's a new idea for people
too; it's a pretty simple-sounding term, and at base, a pretty simple idea.

my best,
James