[EM] [CES #3650] FairVote folks are not the friendliest bunch

[Toby Pereira]

From: James Gilmour <jgilmour at globalnet.co.uk>

I don't think I would have a problem with C winning here, if the votes were all sincere. But that's the problem. They might not be. A and B supporters might just be putting C ahead of their perceived main rival. I suppose this is similar to the "DH3" problem - http://rangevoting.org/DH3.html - except with two main rivals instead of three. As far as I understand, range, approval and Majority Judgement should do OK here (and not forgetting SODA of course).

But in the sincere case, every voter has ranked C above one of A or B, and if it happened that C and only one of A and B were running, then C would win and no-one would be bothered at all.

Toby
>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.

>And I have severe doubts about how effective such a winner could be in office. Quite apart from the sceptical electorate, the
>politicians of Party A and of Party B would be hounding such an office-holder daily.  And the media would be no help  -  they would
>just pour fuel on the flames.  The result would be political chaos and totally ineffective government.

>The flaw in IRV is that it can, sometimes, fail to elect the Condorcet winner.  But IRV avoids the "political" problem of the weak
>Condorcet winner.  I suspect that's why IRV has been accepted for many public and semi-public elections despite the Condorcet flaw.

>James Gilmour
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