[EM] Weak Condorcet winners [was: FairVote are not the friendliest]

[Jameson Quinn]

2011/9/22 robert bristow-johnson <rbj at audioimagination.com>

> On 9/22/11 12:40 PM, James Gilmour wrote:
>
>> I cannot comment on the quoted remark (cut) that prompted your post and I
>> know nothing at all about the activities of anyone at FairVote, but you have
>> hit on a real problem in practical politics in your comment above  -  the
>> problem of the weak Condorcet winner.  This is a very real political
>> problem, in terms of selling the voting system to partisan politicians (who
>> are opposed to any reform) and to a sceptical public.
>>
>
> i remember Rob Ritchie arguing this case to me in 2009 (why "sometimes IRV
> is better than Condorcet").
>
>
>  For example, with 3 candidates and 100 voters (ignoring irritant
>> preferences) we could have:
>>    35 A>C
>>    34 B>C
>>    31 C
>> "C" is the Condorcet winner.  Despite the inevitable howls from FPTP
>> supporters, I think we could sell such an outcome to the electors.
>>
>> But suppose the votes had been (again ignoring irrelevant preferences):
>>    48 A>C
>>    47 B>C
>>     5 C
>> "C" is still the Condorcet winner - no question about that.  But I doubt
>> whether anyone could successfully sell such a result to the electorate, at
>> least, not here in the UK.
>>
>>
> even though there were 48 voters who preferred C over B, 47 that preferred
> C over A, along with the 5 that preferred C over both A and B.
>
> that does not appear to me to be such a bad result.


That's debatable. It's possible that C did not get an appropriate level of
scrutiny from the voters; that if they'd looked more closely, they would
have found some serious flaw.

But the truth doesn't really matter here. This is a problem of perceptions.
If the average voter can be convinced that a win by C is
both intrinsically problematic and probable under Condorcet (or whatever
other system), then that system will be rejected.

And while I don't take everything Richie says at face value, he does have
more experience than basically anyone else at promoting voting reform, so it
would be unwise to entirely ignore his point of view. I believe that he
honestly sees the weak Condorcet winner scenario as an impediment to
promoting Condorcet, and one of his basic reasons for putting his eggs in
the IRV basket. So I think the scenario does deserve attention. And not just
from the point of view of actually resolving the issue, but also from the
point of view of finding a sound bite/talking point for overcoming it.

I find crafting such a talking point easiest in the case of SODA,
second-easiest for MJ, and actually pretty hard for other systems. I'd be
happy to hear different perspectives on this.

Jameson
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