[EM] Proportional Condorcet Voting

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 08:45 PM 5/1/2006, Alex Small wrote:
>It's not a question of whether the method can be quickly worked out 
>by a computer.  It's a question of whether the method is transparent 
>enough for an average voter to look at a small set of data and 
>quickly work out who the proper winner is.

That would seem desirable. However, I'm not sure that it is more 
valuable than the intuitive simplicity of choosing the Condorcet 
winner. It might be quite adequate, for example, that the vote 
results be available on-line, with a program that allows picking any 
two candidates and which shows the pairwise contest results for them.

Plus, of course, that shows the overall pairwise winner, assuming 
that there is one.

As long as the raw vote data is available -- quite practical -- 
anyone could write a program to analyze it, so it would be pretty 
silly for the authorities to put up a program that generated 
deceptive results. It would be caught and exposed immediately....

I've seen, among some election methods advocates, an assumption that 
"the average voter" couldn't understand something like, for example, 
a pairwise election matrix. Properly explained, I don't think the 
average voter, and, indeed, some quite below average, would have any trouble.

However, as readers must know by now, I'm not in favor of elections 
at all. I prefer that we choose representatives instead of electing 
them. As to office holders, I prefer that we hire them rather than 
electing them.... (that is, our chosen representatives -- or us 
directly -- would make hiring decisions deliberatively, as is 
routinely done in business.)

http://metaparty.beyondpolitics.org

Hey! Don't just sit there staring at your computer! DO SOMETHING!