[EM] Re: Candidate withdrawal option

[Steve Eppley]

Hi,

James G-A wrote:
> Mike has recommended CWO as an improvement on Condorcet-wv
> (although he does not see the improvement as an urgent one. Is
> there anyone who thinks that adding CWO to ranked pairs or beatpath
> would be a bad idea? Anyone else who thinks its a good idea? The
> more people weigh in, the better. 

I don't know how Markus Schulze feels about CWO now, but 
a few years ago he wrote that it would be catastrophic.  
His argument did not make sense to me.  He warned that 
candidates in the top cycle would make a deal that changes 
the winner and that that would be terrible.  But in my 
opinion, that would be like vote-trading within a legislature, 
or like a majority coalition that selects the prime minister 
and cabinet in a parliamentary system.

Markus also provided a nifty example that showed that CWO 
doesn't entirely eliminate the fear of being a spoiler.

I think CWO is much more urgent as a patch for IRV
or Plurality Rule than as an improvement to Condorcet.

> 	The rest of this e-mail is my reply to Mike.
> 
>>I believe that it was Steve Eppley who pointed out that the CWO, for 
>>Plurality, would be very helpful for getting rid of strategy problems, 
>>without asking for a change in the actual voting system.
> 
> 	How would CWO work with plurality? Ranked ballots? 

Right.  A lot of candidates would need to withdraw, though.

CWO could also be used in Presidential elections to deal 
with a problem of the Electoral College.

[Historical note: I used two other names for CWO: 
"just-in-time withdrawal" and "well-timed withdrawal."]

--Steve