[EM] Benham's Method looks best among Smith + CD methods

[Michael Ossipoff]

:
Chris--

I've had to be away from the computer for a few days, due to family
emergencies.

You wrote (in regard to my example in which A voters bury B)


>
> I haven't put much thought on how best to break such ties, but I'm
> inclined to say it should be in favour of the candidate with the higher
> score.
> Here that is B,  the sincere CW.
>

Sure, the election of the sincere CW is best. But of course, with that
top-cycle, a method can't know that there is a CW, or, if so, which
candidate it is. The method can only guess. The candidate with the most 1st
place votes, the candidate of the largest faction, is a good guess. But
it's a guess.

Because the method can only guess, then the method can't reliablly elect
the sincere CW when there is one. But what it _can_ reliably do is deter
burial, by likely electing the buriers' last choice (by doing so under the
most likely sincere CW assumption)

That deterrence is the best protection  That's why I prefer Benham and
Woodall, among the Smith + CD + Clone-Independence methods we've discussed.

But I emphasize that I like all of the Smith + CD + Clone-Independence
methods.

As Forest said, Benham is a much more seamless and more easily proposable
method than Woodall.

Electing a beats-all candidate as soon as there is one is a small,
easily-proposed, modification to IRV, and is a proposal that has a good
chance of being well-received, if offered as an improvement on IRV for the
voting-system proposal in the platforms of GPUS, G/GPUSA, SPUSA, Reform,
Peace & Freedom, &/or Working-Family.

...or as a voting-system proposal offered when a newly-elected progressive
party holds a referendum or initiative vote to choose a voting system,
where IRV is the new government's starting voting-system.

I must admit that, in a way, IRV is better than those Condorcet-complying
methods, because: (speaking as a progressive) If the progressives have a
mutual majority, then why should Republocrats have a say in which candidate
of that mutual majority should win?

IRV is great if you're in a mutual majority. And, if you aren't in a mutual
majority, then that must be because either you are wrong, or lots of other
people are wrong. Don't we all assume that we're in a mutua majority?
...on the assumption that our assessment is right, and that other people
have good judgement?

The MMC +  CD + Condorcet + Clone-Independence methods that we've been
discussing provide protection even to voters whoa aren't in a mutual
majority, and I admit that that brings some security. In the event that
some rightmost progressive group fail to support a progressive mutual
majority, but a progressive is still the voted CW, then
Condorcet-compliance brings some security and assurance.

if there's any uncertainty about being in a voted mutual-majority, then
that assurance is desirable. Besides, a method that doesn't meet Condorcet
is vulnerable to being replaced, by a majoriy vote, by a method that meets
Condorcet. So Benham and Woodall are more stable against replacement than
IRV is.

Those two reasons are the reasons why I prefer Benham and Woodall to IRV.
even though, in princple, I prefer it when IRV excludes voters outside a
mutual majoriy from the choice of which of the mutual majority's candidates
wins.

But I'd also be quite satisfied with IRV in the Green scenario, because its
(at least sometime)  exclusion of non-MM voters (from the choice among the
MM's candidates) appeals to me.

In fact, I've proposed, at EM, methods that always make that exclusion, and
apply Benham or Woodall among the innermost MM-preferred set, counting, for
that purpose, only the ballots of that innermost mutual majority.

Michael Ossipoff








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