[EM] RE: [Condorcet] Can we come to consensus?

[James Green-Armytage]

Juho, you write:
>I'm very much in favour of trying to achieve consensus on what 
>Condorcet methods to promote in public. 

	I don't see why this would be necessary. You don't need the consent of
self-selected internet list participants to lobby for a change in the
voting system of any particular group. Instead, you need the consent of
that particular group, or at least a majority thereof. If you are forming
an advocacy organization, you might want to agree on a party line, but
this list in itself is not an advocacy organization.
	If you want to lobby for a particular method, go ahead and do it; don't
wait until everyone on an internet list agrees with you. If you want to
discuss the relative pros and cons of different methods, then IMO this
list is a good place to do it.
	However, now that I've done my share of complaining, I would be curious
about which methods each list member "supports", or "approves of", or
"consents to". To that end, I've created a quick and dirty wiki poll. I
hope that it sees some use. Feel free to stretch the structure of it if
you like.
http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Method_support_poll
	By the way, the method evaluation poll is still ongoing:
http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Method_evaluation_poll
	
>I mean that with sincere votes the best winner 
>may be found outside the Smith set at least in some type of elections 
>(that seek for a nice non-hated consensus candidate)
...
>
>The basic example and question is if A losing to B, C and D (all three) 
>by 51-49 is worse than A, B and C each losing to one of the others by 
>66-33. Minmax picks A as the winner but Smith compliant methods pick A, 
>B or C.

	I see no reason to think that the size of the majority against a
candidate is an indicator of how "hated" they are. If you are interested
in consensus, I suggest that you use approval voting (or something
similar) rather than a Condorcet method. Condorcet is IMO essentially a
majority rule principle rather than a consensus principle. Thus I consider
MMC-failing Condorcet methods to be awkward.

my best,
James