[EM] Majority

[Kevin Venzke]

Hi Forest,

For me, it would be necessary to "lock" the actually voted majorities in some way,
so that the thought experiment majorities don't override them and refute what they
stated.

Otherwise I think it's too spoiler-prone: If you're barely on the losing end of a
majority, but the majority was burdened with an additional candidate, then you
are more likely to win. You just need to squeak past the majority, while they need
far more additional votes to beat each other.

I would maybe form the CDTT (i.e. the Schwartz set resulting from replacing
non-majorities with ties) and only allow the thought experiment's winner to be a
candidate from the CDTT.

But this would still violate Plurality (and certainly lacks elegance).

Kevin


Le samedi 28 mai 2022, 13:59:47 UTC−5, Forest Simmons <forest.simmons21 at gmail.com> a écrit :
> I am both a mathematician and a citizen. My main interest in the realm of
> election methods is to understand the theoretical limitations of practical
> election methods. Theory is supposed to be the servant of practice ... not
> the other way around.
> 
> Election methods are tools of democracy. As such they have a
> psycho/politico aspect that we neglect at our own peril.
> 
> What can we realistically expect from the voters? How do they want to
> express their preferences? How do they expect their preferences to be
> incorporated into a decision?
> 
> For starters, most voters believe in some form of "majority rule."
> 
> If there is a candidate A that is preferred by more than half of the voters
> over any other candidate A', then (all else being equal) A rather than A'
> should be elected.
> 
> The problem is that sometimes there is no such ideal majority pairwise
> candidate IMPC. Who should be elected in that case?
> 
> Answer: How about the candidate closest to being such an IMPC?
> 
> How do you determine "closeness"?
> 
> Why not by how few additional ballots would suffice to convert a candidate
> into an IMPC?
> 
> Is this too hard for citizens of a democracy to accept?
> 
> What objections might there be?
> 
> How to overcome reservations and persuade the electorate?
> 
> -Forest