[EM] The essense of pairwise voting (Re: What SFC & SDSC mean for rank methods)

[Rob Lanphier]

On Sun, 2005-10-23 at 17:36 -0500, Paul Kislanko wrote:
> 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.

Who are we to say that the person who ranks "A (1st) > B (5th)" should
have more of a say in the A vs. B question than the person who ranks "B
(4th) > A (5th)"?  To me, I see one person who says that A is better
than B, and another that says that B is better than A.  Those voters
should have the same rights in deciding that particular question,
regardless of what their respective opinion is of C, D, E, or any other
alphabetic candidate.

Rob