[EM] Eric Maskin promotes the Black method

[fsimmons at pcc.edu]

> From: Jameson Quinn 
> To: robert bristow-johnson 
> Cc: Markus Schulze ,
> election-methods at electorama.com
> Subject: Re: [EM] Eric Maskin promotes the Black method
> 
> >
> >
> > and we've all been groping for a name for this primary voting 
> criteria that
> > is not this non-American, Frenchie, probably sorta pinko-
> socialist secular
> > humanist "intellectual" (did i mention *not* American?) whose 
> heresy is
> > leading us away from the One True Faith of the Single 
> Affirmative Vote. we
> > have sects in the One True Faith, some of us believe in the 
> sanctity of the
> > Two Party System: "if yer ain't fer us, you agin' us. and 
> pass da
> > ammunition, Ma."
> >
> > i don't have a better idea than "true majority rule". but 
> there must be a
> > better one than that. Warren, i remember you like "beats-all 
> winner" for
> > the CW. i wonder if the "beats-all method" is a good label.
> >
> > At one point I ran a poll to try to decide on good names for 
> Condorcetvoting (as well as for Range/Score and for MCA/ER-
> Bucklin/median-based
> systems). You can see the results here 
> .Ironically, there was a 
> Condorcet cycle on what to call Condorcet; the smith
> set was [Instant?] Round Robin Voting; Pairwise Champion Voting; and
> Beats-All Voting.

The trouoble with "beats all voting" is that it lends itself to editorial ridicule too easily: "Well don't that 
beat all!"

> 
> Since then, I've tried to use the term "pairwise champion" for 
> the CW,
> except occasionally when I'm writing about mathematical issues 
> to a
> highly-savvy audience. In my opinion, that terminology works 
> well. I do not,
> therefore, think that PCV is necessarily the best "brand" for 
> Condorcetsystems; I think that probably IRRV is good for that 
> (despite the fact that
> it suggests Copeland as the tiebreaker, whereas I support C//A 
> as the best
> simply-explainable tiebreaker). The similarity with IRV is a 
> good thing, to
> my mind, though I understand that some may disagree.
> 
> Note that if you google "True Majority Voting", you'll find that 
> there was a
> recent (but now-defunct??) attempt by IRV advocates to 
> appropriate this
> term. I think that "true majority" is less explanatory than 
> IRRV, PCV, or
> BAV.

The first time I heard the phrase "True Majority Winner" was in the Scientific American article six or eight 
years ago on Condorcet Voting.  The point of the article was that if you believe in majority rule, you 
should prefer electing the CW over any other alternative. But at the end of the article (in order to give a 
definite example of a decisive Condorcet method) they proposed a method that turned out to be 
Copeland with a Borda tie breaker, i.e. just slightly different (and almost as bad as) Black.

Note that Copeland with a Borda tie breaker is not quite as bad as Black for the same reason that 
Beatpath(covering, wv) is slightly better than Beatpath(wv).

Forest