[EM] In defense of the Electoral College (was Re: Making a Bad Thing Worse)

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

Dave Ketchum wrote:
> On Tue, 11 Nov 2008 20:16:55 +0100 Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
>>>> A possible tiebreaker for same names would be to prepend (or append) 
>>>> the state of origin to each candidate name. In case two have the 
>>>> same name in the same state, the state decides who gets to be 
>>>> "number one" and "number two". These corner cases would be extremely 
>>>> unlikely, but it doesn't hurt to specify them.
>>>
>>>
>>> My point was that this is a problem affecting ANY election method, 
>>> thus not needing special attention for Condorcet.
>>
> Again, the method does not matter.  If the name Bush turns up from two 
> different sources it is essential to determine whether it is:
>      One candidate, for whom the votes must be summed or
>      Two candidates, competing separately, that must somehow be 
> identified  as such.

In that case, use whatever identity connection method is used with 
Plurality. It would have to be formalized (for the reasons I mentioned), 
and to break ties one could use (as I have suggested) the state of 
origin. It's going to be very unlikely that you'll have two George W. 
Bushes in Texas, for instance. As you said, the method doesn't matter.

> Assuming that this represents 100 votes for A then 100 A>C is 
> represented.  If B was also in the matrix there would be 100 A>B.  This 
> last 100 fails to show up below:

Oops. Yes, that's true. Still, you get the point: the method (when 
properly implemented) takes two sorted matrices and produces a sorted 
matrix, possibly larger in size, but still a valid input for later merges.