[EM] Bouricius reply, BR, Tideman, recent USA elections

[Jonathan Lundell]

On Nov 8, 2009, at 10:40 PM, robert bristow-johnson wrote:

> On Nov 8, 2009, at 7:50 PM, Jonathan Lundell wrote:
>
>> On Nov 8, 2009, at 4:35 PM, Warren Smith wrote:
>>
>>> Tideman said IRV was unsupportable if it is feasible to compute
>>> pairwise matrix.  That was
>>> because Tideman had other voting methods he considered clearly
>>> superior to IRV and these methods used the pairwise matrix.    By
>>> "clearly superior" I mean, so superior in every respect, that  
>>> Tideman
>>> felt there was no conceivable use for IRV, ever (in situations where
>>> it was feasible to compute pariwise matrix) where that use could be
>>> "supported."
>>> That is what "unsupportable" means.
>>
>> Tideman ranks IRV highest in resistance to strategy, and generally  
>> better than the pairwise methods in lucidity
>
> can someone explain to this layman what the metric "lucidity" is in  
> regard to election methods?

Generally speaking, the degree to which a method is understandable by  
voters.

>
>> and cost of computation.
>
> and why the cost of computation (as if it takes the official  
> computers 10 seconds to crunch the numbers instead of 5) is  
> important in modern times?  it's not like the cost is O(2^N) or or O 
> (N!).

It's relevant in two ways, I think. One is wrt hand counting. The  
other is actual computational complexity. I don't think that any of  
the methods on Tideman's FPTP-replacement list are complex in that  
sense, but there are certainly proposed systems (including Tideman's  
own elaboration of PR-STV) that appear to be impractical to compute  
with current technology and algorithms, in some cases.