[EM] Condocet with many candidates - two round elections considered

[Kevin Venzke]

Hi Peter,

--- En date de : Mer 16.6.10, Peter Zbornik <pzbornik at gmail.com> a écrit :
>thanks for your view on the topic.
>In election-theoretic language, what criterion is used to describe, that a 
>method performs as well with many as with few candidates?
>There is a list of criterias in the table 
>at:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method#Comparison_with_other_prefer
>ential_single-winner_election_methods, but I don't know which it is (clone-
>independence? Maybe some other criterion too?).

Unfortunately this is a difficult criterion to try to define. Independence 
of clones is probably the best one. It says performance won't degrade
by cloning candidates or consolidating a set of clones into one candidate.
But it doesn't say anything about what happens if you just add a lot of
unrelated candidates.

Actually the criterion there called "Independence of Smith-dominated
alternatives" is helpful also as it means that every candidate in the
election either has a beatpath to every other candidate, or else has
no effect on the outcome.

Kevin Venzke