[EM] 3-slot Condorcet//Top Ratings

[C.Benham]

Jameson,

You claim  to be concerned about the "chicken dilemma" scenario and 
you've typed that you think a method
should "tend to respect Majority Condorcet". while making it plain that 
you aren't ready to die in a ditch for
FBC compliance (and presumably that also applies to Later-no-Help).

Also you say that practical reform proposals should be able to be easily 
explained and justified to the non-expert
"man in the street" (although the method you currently advocate, U/P, 
only just  fills that bill if you omit some
"fine print" that contains some complicated arbitrary rules about 
default ratings).

> If you leave all three ratings blank for a candidate, that usually 
> means the same as rating them "acceptable". There are two exceptions. 
> First, if you made a mark to rate some candidates "acceptable", then 
> the ones you didn't make any mark for are counted as "unacceptable". 
> And second, if the two most-preferred candidates both can't win, 
> because more than half of voters marked them "unacceptable", then 
> candidates with no mark count as "unacceptable".

Not in the spirit of  Ockham's  Razor. 
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/occam-s-razor


C: As Mike Ossipoff recently explained, U/P   (along with IBBIFA, MTA, 
MCA, MJ)  fails the  Chicken Dilemma criterion.  And U/P fails the 
Condorcet criterion.

So as something that better fits your stated aims, I suggest simply  
3-slot Condorcet//Top Ratings:

*Voters give the candidates one of 3 ratings (say Top, Middle, Bottom). 
Default rating is bottom-most.
Inferring ranking from these ratings, any candidate that pairwise beats 
all the others wins.
Otherwise the candidate with highest Top Ratings score wins.*

Smith//Top Ratings would be technically a bit better, but  the "Smith 
set"  part  would probably make the method harder to explain.

Chris Benham