[EM] D2MAC can be much more efficient than Range Voting (corrected)

[Scott Ritchie]

On Thu, 2007-03-08 at 10:56 -0500, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
> At 04:55 AM 3/8/2007, Scott Ritchie wrote:
> >But let us not forget that even random candidate can get better results
> >than any method some of the time.
> It would be important to determine conditions where Mr. Richie's 
> statement is true. Under what conditions could random ballot be the 
> ideal method? What goal of an election would be best served by random 
> ballot, and not by another method designed specifically for that goal? 
> 
I didn't mean ideal method, I meant sometimes it gets better results.
The reason is that random _candidate_ will sometimes pick the
"best" (however defined) choice.  Since no deterministic election method
will consistantly pick the "best" choice in all circumstances, that
means sometimes you might get lucky by ignoring the ballots altogether
and picking a random winner.

Apropo, we shouldn't really be surprised when we see statements like
"some of the time, this voting system is better than this one."  Unless
there is strict dominance, this will always be true.

Thanks,
Scott Ritchie