[EM] Another question for Strong Condorcet advocates

[Michael Ossipoff]

Is before, with Strong Condorcet vs Symmetrical ICT, I'm going to list
some disadvantages of Strong Condorcet in comparison to Approval and
Score. Then I'll ask what redeeming advantages Strong Condorcet has,
to outweigh those disadvantages.

But, in this case, I'll supply an answer for you, though you might
have other answers too. I'll discuss the answer that i supply.

Again, I'll re-state what Strong Condorcet is: It refers to some
versions of unimproved Condorcet that are popular with EM members. It
includes Beatpath, Ranked-Pairs, River, Goldfish, Kemeny, VoteFair,
and maybe others too. Kristofer defined it as methods that meet the
(illegitimately-defined) Condorcet Criterion, and a few weakenings of
IIAC. Maybe Kristofer included another requirement too, but I'm mostly
defining Strong Condorcet by naming some methods that the term
includes.

Some disadvantages of Strong Condorcet, in comparison to Approval and Score:

1. Favorite-Betrayal Criterion (FBC):.

No need to go into detail. You know that Strong Condorcet fails FBC,
and what the societal consequences of that are. Strong Condorcet
advocates speculate that people's voting won't be affected by FBC
failure. The purpose here is not to adjudicate that question.

2. Later-No-Help (LNHe):

That has been discussed here too. We agree that, when making out your
ballot, it's better if you don't need to vote for additional
candidates, in order to fully help those for whom you've already
voted. Later-No-Help compliance considerably simplifies strategy,
especially u/a strategy. Strong Condorcet gives voters a strategic
need to rank unacceptable candidates in reverse order of winnability,
due to Strong Condorcet's LNHe failure.

3. Participation:

That's an embarrassment criterion. It's about a ridiculous thing that
Strong Condorcet will do. When opponents of an enactment proposal tell
everyone about Strong Condorcet's Participation failure, that will be
fatal to the enactment proposal.

4. Consistency:

Same as above, though Participation is probably worse.

Strong Condorcet fails FBC, LNHe, Participation, and Consistency.

Approval and Score meet FBC, LNHe, Participation, and Consistency.

5. Count-fraud vulnerability:

I won't repeat about this again, because I've already thoroughly
discussed it here on EM. Suffice it to say again that all Condorcet
methods are incomparably more count-fraud-vulnerable than Approval and
Score are. Approval is by far the least count-fraud-vulnerable of the
voting system reform proposals.

6. Arbitrariness, innumerable versions:

There are innumerable ways to count rankings. The question will be
asked "Why your way instead of one of the infinitely many other ways?"
Opponents will make good use of that infinity of rank counts, to
obfuscate the issue. Rank-balloting advocates haven't, can't, and
won't agree on a proposal.

Approval, in contrast, is the obvious, natural, minimal improvement on
Plurality--the simple and obvious result of repealing Plurality's
forced-falsification rule that is the cause of Plurality's inadequacy.
No arbitrariness. No issue, debate or controversy about how to count
the ballots.

So here is my question to Strong Condorcet advocates:

What advantages do you claim for Strong Condorcet, advantages not
possessed by Approval and Score, that outweigh the Strong Condorcet
disadvantages that I've listed above?

As I promises, I'll supply an answer for you: The Condorcet Criterion (CC).

Allow me to comment on that:

CC is a valuable and desirable strategy improvement--when it's
genuinely available. That's why I like Symmetrical ICT, because it's
designed to make CC available, by eliminating the worst strategy
needs.

But we're talking about Strong Condorcet, not Symmetrical ICT. Strong
Condorcet doesn't share Symmetrical ICT's properties of eliminating
those strategy needs.

There are several things that will make  CC unavailable with Strong Condorcet:

1. FBC failure. (Again, Strong FBC advocates speculate that it might
not be a problem, and this isn't the place to adjudicate that claim)

2. Chicken dilemma. No, I don't claim that Approval and Score don't
have it too (and deal with it nicely). I merely mean that the chicken
dilemma, when it occurs, causes a non-sincere-voting need that would
wipe out the availability benefit from CC.

3. CC isn't available if the CC-complying method can't be enacted.
Above, I told of some reasons why Strong Condorcet would be difficult
or impossible to enact. Having already discussed them, I'll now just
list them:

Participation-failure. Consistency-failure. More complicated and
arbitrary definition and count rule.

4. Count fraud:

CC benefit isn't available if the winner is being decided by count fraud.

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Those four problems to the availability of CC benefit, I claim, wipe
out the claim that CC outweighs the Strong Condorcet methods'
disadvantages with respect to Approval and Score.

But maybe Strong Condorcet advocates have some other Strong Condorcet
advantages, in comparison to Approval and Score. Or maybe they
disagree with one or more of the four CC availability problems that I
listed directly above.

Strong Condorcet advocates are invited to answer my question about
what mitigating advantages Strong Condorcet has, to outweigh the
above-listed 6 disadvantages, or to tell why every one of the 4 CC
availability problems that I listed directly above won't be a problem.

Mike Ossipoff


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