[EM] [CES #4429] Looking at Condorcet

[Dave Ketchum]

Ranking more than ten candidates?  Condorcet does NOT require such.   
However, if too many are running, you need to look for sanity:
.     You may have preferences among those most likely to win - pick  
those you see as the best few of these.
.     Also pick among the few you would prefer, regardless of their  
chances.  This voting will help them get encouraging vote counts even  
if there is no chance of their winning.
.     Do not waste your energy on others.

Now do your ranking among these, hopefully having time to rank  
properly according to desirability, not caring, for the moment, as to  
winnability.

Dave Ketchum

On Feb 3, 2012, at 2:45 PM, Andy Jennings wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 10:09 PM, Richard Fobes <ElectionMethods at votefair.org 
> > wrote:
> On 2/2/2012 11:07 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
> On 02/02/2012 05:28 AM, Jameson Quinn wrote:
>
> I honestly think that honest rating is easier than honest ranking.
> ...
>
> As a contrast, to me, ranking is easier than rating. ...
>
> I too find ranking easier than rating.
>
As do I.
>
> I go back and forth on this, myself.  Some thoughts:
>
> - If I had to rank more than ten candidates, I think it would be  
> difficult unless I put them into three or four tiers first.  Then,  
> perhaps I would choose to rank the candidates within the tiers or  
> perhaps I would leave them all tied if I didn't really care that  
> much.  Thus, for me, honest rating with just a few buckets is more  
> basic than ranking.
>
> - If someone built a computer program that presented me pairs of  
> candidates at a time as Kristofer suggested, that would make it  
> somewhat easier.  I think I would still prefer to divide them into  
> tiers first, but if I divided them into tiers first, I might not  
> need the pairwise comparison hand-holding.  Also, suppose that I  
> analyzed the candidates in three different policy dimensions that I  
> consider equally important and I found that my policy preferences  
> were:
> Foreign Policy: A>B>C
> Domestic Social Issues: B>C>A
> Domestic Economic Issues: C>A>B
> Now I prefer A to B, B to C, and C to A.  A cycle among my own  
> personal preferences when I compare them pairwise.  Then my output  
> ranking would depend on the order in which the pairwise questions  
> were asked.  ??!?
...
> - If a real election were being tabulated with Condorcet, I would  
> vote honestly.
>
> - If a real election were being tabulated with IRV, I would warn  
> people not to vote for minor candidates.

There is no harm in minor candidates getting the few votes they  
deserve in IRV.  However, if the vote counters, as they work, see the  
deserving winner as momentarily having the fewest votes, this  
candidate will have lost.
>
> Let me admit that a crucial point for me is that the only way to  
> gain Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives is to tell the voters  
> to evaluate each candidate independently and vote honestly, which  
> may make me biased towards rating methods.  FBC is very important to  
> me and I'm still skeptical of the FBC-compliant ranked-ballot  
> methods recently proposed.
>
> ~ Andy
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