[EM] What SFC & SDSC mean for rank methods

[Paul Kislanko]

> MIKE OSSIPOFF writes in part...
> Subject: [EM] What SFC & SDSC mean for rank methods
> 

> But they have a special meaning for rank methods. Critics of 
> pairwise-count 
> methods, including Condorcet, criticize these methods for the 
> offensive 
> strategies that are possible. Offensive order-reversal and 
> truncation. Some 
> complain that these strategies create a strategic mess.

and goes on to imply those are the only criticisms of pairwise-count
methods. As a non-specialist, I don't "look for acronymns in journals", but
I have a different concern, and it's people like me who'd have to be
convinced to adopt a new method (and I, at least, don't have to be convinced
that plurality is bad).

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.

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.