[EM] Some chance for consensus (was: Buying Votes)

[Jobst Heitzig]

Dear Forest,

good to hear from you again!

You said:
> Not quite as important, but still valuable, is achieving partial cooperation when that is the best that can be 
> done:
> 
> 25  A1>A>>A2
> 25  A2>A>>A1
> 25  B
> 25  C
> 
> Here there isn't much hope for consensus, but it would be nice if the first two factions could still cooperate 
> on gettiing A elected, say 25% of the time. (50% seems too much to hope for)

That's absolutely true! We both tried to achieve this during the last year. But it is very difficult to make this happen with strategic voters. Perhaps I find the time this weekend to write a summary of what we tried in this respect, so that perhaps someone can build on that an come up with a new idea. 

> It seems to me that if we require our method to accomplish the potential cooperation in this scenario while 
> achieving consensus where possible, the ballots would have to have more levels, and there would have to be 
> an intermediate fall back between the consensus test and the random ballot default.


That could work, but I wouldn't bet on it yet.

Yours, Jobst