[Election-Methods] Bullet Voting in the wider media

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 11:03 AM 10/9/2007, Chris Benham wrote:

>Abd,
>
>What do you propose if the Range winner is pairwise beaten by more 
>than one candidate?
>
>Chris Benham

An obvious question of great interest to election methods experts. 
Not of much interest practically speaking. If it is sum-of-votes 
range, which I highly recommend, such a situation would be 
extraordinarily rare. But a complete method must address it. There is 
a simple solution, and it does not have to be perfect.

The contest is between the Range winner and any candidate who beats 
the Range winner. If there are more than two, then there are possibilities:

(1) (Preferred) The Condorcet winner among the set, (Range Winner, 
those who beat the Range winner).
(2) If there is a whole condorcet cycle beating the Range winner, 
then the one with the lowest Range score is eliminated and the 
contest is between the Condorcet winner remaining.

(The Range winner is guaranteed to be in the runoff. We can, thus, 
exclude the Range winner from any cycle, if the Range winner is a 
member of a Condorcet cycle.)

This, then, always reduces to two candidates which can be resolved in 
a single runoff.

Much better: use Asset Voting and deliberative process....