[EM] Paul: All preferences counted equally

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

Paul--

You said:

My "discomfort" (can't quite call it a criticism) with any method that
counts votes using the pairwise matrix is that my "A (1st) > B (5th)" vote
in a 4-way race is negated by some other voter's "B (fourth) > A (fifth)"
vote. Neither of us particularly want B, but by the time the other voter is
ranking fourth and fifth she's in the "who cares?" part of her ballot.

I reply:

Counting all voted pairwise preferences equally does a lot to get rid of 
strategy problems. But James GA has proposed a method that weights pairwise 
preference votes with ratings differences, and it works fine, for an 
FBC-failing method.  But it adds too much complication for an initial 
proposal.

Anyway, you can't have everything. If you want minimum strategy need, and 
simplicity, then you've got to count all voted pairwise preferences equally.

You continued:

In a 5-way race there are 120 unique sets of preferences (151 if equal
rankings are allowed) and any method thhat only uses 10 counters to
determine a winner is going to mess things up somehow.

I reply:

What is a counter? Do you refer to the hiring of only 10 people to handcount 
the ballots? Nowadays a computer program would probably be used. But of 
course a computer shouldn't be used unless there are paper ballots too, and 
unless the sourcecode is available to everyone, and checkable by anyone. I 
don't know the details of how computer-counting could be made really secure, 
but most feel that it can.

Lacking secure computer counts, we could hire lots of people for the 
pairwise counting. It needn't take longer than IRV. In fact it could be 
quicker, with one team for each pairwise comparison. Quicker but more 
expensive.

But why would it mess things up if only 10 ballot-counters were hired? A 
national presidential count with lots of candidates would take a while then, 
of course.

Mike Ossipoff

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