[EM] Range Voting vs Condorcet (Greg Nisbet)

[Jobst Heitzig]

Dear Diego,

you wrote:
>  The risk of minority will remains. How does FAWRB perform in binary issues?

What you mean by "risk of minority"? That a minority favourite may win? 
Well, that is just the *feature* of FAWRB: It gives each part of the 
electorate full control over an equal share of the winning probability. 
This is the requirement of democracy.

So, when 55% prefer A and 45% prefer B and both groups do not care to 
look for a good compromise C or do not cooperate in electing such a good 
compromise by using FAWRBs cooperation mechanism, then indeed A will win 
with 55% probability and B will win with 45% probability - which is just 
fair and what a democratically thinking person would expect. This also 
answers your question about the binary case.

However, let me point out that in most real-world issues, there is a 
possibility to come up with a good compromise option.

Sometimes, for example, this can be achieved by "side payments", that 
is, C is A plus some payments (or other forms of compensation) from the 
A supporting group to the B supporting group.

Once a good compromise is found, using FAWRB makes it probable that this 
compromise is also elected. Majoritarian methods fail here since with 
them, the majority has no incentive at all not to bullet vote for A and 
thus overrule the rest.

> If a consensus exists between the factions, then this danger would be 
> too rare. There`s no gain for any faction to leave the issue undecided.

I don't think so. In my experience of politics it is often the case that 
one faction strongly wants to stick with the status quo, so they would 
have a strong incentive to refuse cooperation under your scheme.

> Not always we can find an unanimity...

Yes, that's exactly the reason why sometimes we need to resort to a 
chance process in order to give every voter their fair right to 
influence the decision.

Yours, Jobst