[EM] "scored condorcet", etc

[Dave Ketchum]

On Tue, 22 Nov 2005 10:00:31 -0800 rob brown wrote:

> On 11/21/05, Dave Ketchum <davek at clarityconnect.com 
> <mailto:davek at clarityconnect.com>> wrote:
> 
>     An aside - Plurality is not broken - it does EXACTLY what it was
>     designed
>     to do.  Problem is that those of us who bother to think about it want
>     something else.
> 
> 
> I suppose if what you say it was designed to do is "select the plurality 
> winner", well yeah, it does what it was designed to do.  But that is 
> rather obvious and redundant.
> 
> If you say it was designed to, say, "select a reasonable candidate", I 
> stand by my statement that it is broken.
> 
>     BUT, I do not understand your words about parties - Plurality pushes
>     toward two strong parties while Condorcet gives parties enough
>     visibility
>     that more might thrive.
> 
> 
> In some ways I think the term "party" is not a very good term.  Of 
> course, people will always gather together to advance various causes or 
> candidates, and that is great.


I see three definitions here:
      A group intending and getting recognition as a "party" by the state 
- with associated privileges and responsibilities.  In NY we have half a 
dozen, based on their candidates getting about 1% of the votes for governor.
      A group trying for the above, but failing to get the votes.
      A group fitting within the definition of your next paragraph, but 
NOT in the above more restrictive definitions.  I do not like calling 
these parties.

I was thinking within the first two, though the third can also do 
nominating, etc.

ANYWAY, I was responding to and disagreeing with your previous lead 
paragraph.  I see:
      Plurality promoting two parties being strong, since fringe parties 
get lost in the noise.
      Condorcet friendly to fringe parties since they can be voted for 
while voting preferences among the major parties, and these vote counts 
tell more about strength waxing and waning.

Note that I LIKE the details being visible, and understood, better than 
your desire to hide them within a single number for each candidate.

> 
> I am referring to a more specific thing, which is the phenomena whereby 
> people incur strategic advantage by gathering together prior to an 
> election and deciding among themselves which candidate they wish to 
> advance, so as to avoid splitting the vote.
> 
> I think this is the number one reason for parties in the US.  Parties 
> would still exist in the absense of a system susceptible to vote 
> splitting, but I don't think they would be highly polarized in the way 
> they are today, nor would they be as powerful and so dominate 
> government.  Also, I think they would tend to concentrate more on 
> specific causes (for instance, a "pro-choice" party or what have you), 
> rather than on choosing and then advancing candidates.
>  
> 
>     Your mention of IRV makes me wonder what you are thinking of:
> 
> 
> My mention of IRV simply was saying that IRV, like condorcet, does not 
> produce output that is easy to grasp by average joes.  I don't in any 
> way propose mixing IRV in.
> 
>     Condorcet with something else mixed in, such as Approval - too
>     complex - leave this as a challenge to those wanting such. 
> 
> 
> Yeah.  Yuk.
> 
> The rest of your post seemed to be explaining to me what the pairwise 
> matrix is all about, and I already know all that.  I think you kind of 
> missed the point of what I am after.  I want something that gives a 
> single score per candidate.  The pairwise matrix would still exist, but 
> somewhere between the pairwise matrix and the final selection of a 
> single candidate, I want an intermediate result with one score per 
> candidate.  Apparantly MinMax does this, but it might not be as good a 
> method as others, as well as producing scores that would need some 
> normalization prior to displaying as, say, a bar graph (i.e. the best 
> score is zero or possibly a negative number, with no clear "theoretical 
> worst score").  Still, it is in the direction I am going.


Clearly I see more value in the Condorcet arrays than you do.  They 
provide comparisons between each candidate and each opposition.  I went 
into that for you seemed not to.

> 
> -rob

-- 
  davek at clarityconnect.com    people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek
  Dave Ketchum   108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY  13827-1708   607-687-5026
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