[EM] Re the "official" definition of "condorcet"

[Paul Kislanko]

RLSuter at aol.com wrote:

> > --Actually, as a math PhD, what I understand is that the
> > Condorcet criterion is NOT "already well-defined"
> 
> This mystifies me. I've long understood the Condorcet criterion
> to mean that if one candidate would defeat all others in one to one
> contests, that candidate is the Condorcet winner. None of the
> definitions you cited, despite their differences and imprecisions
> in wording, is inconsistent with this understanding as far as I
> can tell. I also don't see how a math PhD would have any reason
> to interpret this differently, or that regarding the meaning of the
> Condorcet criterion, being a math PhD is any justification for
> claiming to see distinctions that others don't see, since the math
> required is elementary arithmetic. It's kind of like saying that
> someone who knows 50 languages can understand English
> sentences better than English only speakers can. It's possible,
> of course, but far from certain, and in any case it's not for
> one multi-language speaker alone to decide, since other
> multi-language speakers might disagree.

Even English-as-a-first-language speakers can grasp the problem.

It is that the Condorcet *Criterion* is not well-defined for any method that
does specifically call for pairwise rankings _by the voters_. In general, it
is UN-defined and probably un-definable, since when an election is held
there is only one way to vote, and I do NOT get to express my n x (n-1) / 2
pairwise preferences.