[Election-Methods] USING Condorcet

[Juho]

On Jul 3, 2008, at 1:39 , Kevin Venzke wrote:

> The scenario is more like "chicken." If I think you will be  
> sincere, then
> I should bury your candidate. If I think you're going to bury my  
> candidate,
> then (if I only care about who wins) I should vote sincerely. Or  
> else I
> can be stubborn and bury your candidate, thereby refusing to let  
> you bury
> my candidate and get away with it. When we both bury, then we crash  
> and
> elect the worst candidate.

The basic difficulty in large real life elections is that it is not  
"I" who can decide how to vote, and the opinions of others (as well  
as "us") are uncertain to "us".

> My response to Juho's last two posts is just that I think an election
> method should behave properly even in simple scenarios. I don't think
> simple scenarios will just disappear when Condorcet is introduced.

That scenario was the simplest I could imagine. Only three  
candidates. One strong candidate but below majority, one weaker  
runner-up, and third clearly weaker candidate. This was also the most  
threatening scenario from burial point of view that I could imagine.  
Are there simpler and more threatening ones?

Simple scenarios will not disappear but the ability to control how  
people vote and clairvoyance to their plans will for the most part  
disappear in large real life elections. (Or actually those simple  
scenarios where there are e.g. only three groups of voters in which  
all voters have exactly the same opinion and/or will react similarly  
will practically disappear in large real life elections.)

I have made the request to present a credible real life scenario  
where burial would really be a working strategy multiple times to  
multiple experts but so far I haven't seen (or recognized ;-) any  
such examples. I think this gives support to the idea that Condorcet  
methods are quite safe from burial point of view in large real life  
elections. I'm not sure if any counter strategies (when voting or in  
polls or as modified methods) will ever be needed to defend them  
(maybe not even in the most strategic societies).

Juho



P.S. The worst case I can imagine is maybe one where the voters are  
happy (and maybe directed to e.g. by requiring full rankings) to vote  
as told by some central management within the parties. In such  
situations large elections may become more like elections of few  
controlling individuals and the use of strategies thereby becomes  
easier. Also the plans of others would be better known to other  
controllers since the voting guidance would have to be distributed to  
large masses. (This is the reason why I often mention also free  
individual decision making as one criterion in addition to the  
elections being large and public, when describing what is considered  
to be a typical real life election.)






		
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