[EM] The wiki questionaire

[Chris Benham]

Jobst,
In answer to a question from Mike Ossipoff

>About the part about equal ranking resulting in candidates having the
>> same probabililty of winning:
>> It's impossible for me to give two candidates equal probability of
>> winning by ranking them equal. Did the question mean "equal effect on
>> their win-probabilities"?
>
you wrote:

>What I meant was this: When a voter expressed that s/he prefers A to B, we
>interpret this to mean that if s/he could choose between A and B, she would
>choose A. Now what do we think the voter would choose when s/he put A and B
>at equal ranks? Do we assume that s/he would delegate the decision by, say,
>asking a friend to decide, or do we assume that she would throw a coin?
>
I must say that I find this a very odd question, which only seems 
relevant if instead of an election method we're talking about Random 
Dictator. I prefer Mike's suggestion.
An interesting question might be: "Should equal-ranking a set of 
candidates instead of strictly ranking them consecutively cause the 
probability that one of those candidates be elected to change?".
Related similar questions are:
(1) "Should equal-ranking a set of candidates at the top make it more 
likely that one of those candidates will be elected than if they were 
all strictly ranked at the top?"
(2)"Should equal-ranking a set of candidates at the bottom make it less 
likely that one of those candidates will be elected than if they were 
all strictly ranked at the bottom?"
(Should truncated candidates be treated the same as if they were 
explicitly ranked equal-last?)

Chris  Benham