[EM] FW: Recent History Perspective on Condorcet Methods

[Ken Kuhlman]

Forest.. good stuff! Thanks for the post.  A few questions:

On 8/30/05, Simmons, Forest <simmonfo at up.edu> wrote:
> The main serious Condorcet proposals over the past ten years have been
> Beatpath, Ranked Pairs, and MinMax which I have listed in increasing order
> of simplicity and decreasing order of performance. 

Do you know where I can find examples of these performance
differences? Specifically re: beatpath vs ranked pairs.  I haven't
been able to find anything on the wiki.

>  More recently we could
> insert River between Ranked Pairs and MinMax.  The paradox remains;
> simplicity and performance are diametrically opposed. 

Is there a strong reason to value simplicity?  While it would be nice,
I don't see it as necessary for the average voter to understand how
their votes will be tabulated.  Very few people understand why, for
example, the state of Iowa has 7 congressmen.  Why should we expect
them to understand ballot counting if we don't expect them to
understand congressional seat assignments?

> To make matters worse, there has always been an unresolved controversy over
> whether it is better to measure defeat strength (a concept used by all four
> methods) in terms of margins or winning votes. 

Why has Woodall's "symmetric completion" not garnered more attention
as a method for handling truncated ballots?  Is there an argument
against it?   I've been trying to study the idea that ballots can be
used to determine the relatedness of the candidates, and symmetric
completion is such an obvious idea from that perspective that I have a
hard time understanding the value of the "margins/winning votes"
debate.

> The Condorcet proponents on the EM listserv have gone round and round on
> these issues, while never coming to a concensus on them. 
>   
> However, recently Jobst showed that if one measures defeat strength by total
> approval (of the victor in the pairwise defeat) then all four of these
> competing methods coalesce into one method. 

But why should approval be included on the ballot in the first place? 
Doesn't it just create another opportunity for strategy?   What's the
gain? (Other than paving the way for DMC)


Thanks again for the retrospective!
-Ken