[EM] Re: To Chris, about Range Voting

[Bart Ingles]

Chris Benham wrote:
> "If  a majority prefers candidate x to any other candidate, then x must 
> win".

If this test is about sincere preferences, then all methods are subject 
to "false positives" due to strategic voting.  In theory, false 
negatives would also be possible if voters are misinformed about other 
voters' preferences:

51 A>B>C
02 B
47 C>B>A

If a few of the A voters believe that C has a chance of winning, despise 
C strongly enough, and are comfortable enough with B to rank B first, 
then it's possible for B to win in a method that meets "majority favorite".

As far as I'm concerned, Majority Favorite's main value is as a sanity 
check for ranked methods-- if you collect this data, you are generally 
obligated not to contradict it.  Used in this way, only ballot 
information is important, not sincere preferences.

I'm generally suspicious of any criterion containing the term "majority" 
in the name, partly because it's so easy to come up with absurd methods 
that meet these criteria.  Although Majority Favorite is probably more 
defensible than the others, which admit various kinds of "derived" or 
"manufactured" majorities.

Bart