[EM] Election Goals & Methods - a review

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

Dave Ketchum wrote:

> Runoffs:  Essential with FPTP unless one candidate receives a majority 
> vote, for there is too great a chance for best-liked to not receive the 
> most votes.  Top-two runoff weakness is the chance for FPTP to have seen 
> true best-liked as third.  Of less value for methods that let voters 
> better express their desires.

You might want to add that the second round of the runoff is strategy 
free, as there are only two candidates. Thus a runoff may have 
advantages beyond other methods if people strategize a lot (e.g. in 
small council elections). The strategy would then involve making the 
"wrong" top two survive to the second round, so the first round would 
have to use a method that is fairly resistant to strategy.

One (complicated) idea I've suggested earlier is to have a runoff with 
two Condorcet methods: the first surviving candidate is the winner of a 
good "honest voters'" method, while the second surviving candidate is 
the winner of a burial-resistant (though perhaps nonmonotonic, etc) 
method. If the voters are honest, the first winner prevails; if the 
voters strategize heavily, at least they can get no worse than what the 
second method provides.

It's probably overkill for a public election, but might be useful in 
small or intermediate size scenarios.