[EM] ignoring "strength of opinion"

[rob brown]

On 12/1/05, Paul Kislanko <kislanko at airmail.net> wrote:
>
> > I replied to Rob:
> >   Right.  That's a (dubious) interpretation by Borda, not
> >   preference info contained in the voters' orderings.
>
> There's no need to bring poor Borda into this. The "problem" relating to
> "strength of opinion" can be described purely in Condorcet terms.


Borda was used as an example of "the bad way".

Voter X votes A>...>Z and voter Y votes ....Z>A. In the pairwise matrix that
> is the same as those two voters not expressing any preference for A or Z.
> It
> just seems wrong to me that a voter who has A first and Z last can have
> his
> pairwise preference cancelled by someone who who Z next-to-last and A
> last.
>

Sorry if you don't want me mentioning borda, but the only way to get around
what you see as "wrong" is by doing exactly what borda does.  And that is
bad.

I will completely, 100% agree that treating those two things equally *seems*
wrong at first glance.  It is counterintuitive to ignore the magnitude of
the difference.  But it is what allows Condorcet methods to work.  Condorcet
allows people to never have to consider strategy when placing their vote.
By eliminating the vote splitting effect that you would have in most other
methods (including anything that considered the magnitude of the difference,
as you advocate), it eliminates the main strategic advantage that clustering
into two opposing parties has.
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