[EM] Question to the Condorcetists

[robert bristow-johnson]

> On 03/01/2024 10:49 PM EST Michael Ossipoff <email9648742 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
...
> 
> The entire Participation-check only takes half as long as the original exhaustive pairwise-count used by Condorcet.
> 

I have to admit that I am not following this closely, but in my superficial understanding of the argument, we're discussing the complexity of the tabulation as if it were done centrally, by a single computer, similarly to what we **have** to do with Hare RCV.

But, essentially, every Condorcet-consistent method is Precinct Summable with N(N-1)/2 pairs of numbers (N is the number of candidates) that can be computed locally at each polling place and reported upward to be added up, similarly to FPTP (except the latter needs only N numbers).

In fact those N(N-1) tallies can be incremented as each ballot is inserted into the voting tabulator at the precinct level.  If first-choice votes are also tallied (say, if the method enacted is Condorcet-Plurality), the number of tallies increases from N(N-1) to simply N².  But the hard work is done decentralized by *many* computers.  It's distributed computation.

FPTP, Approval, Score all require fewer tallies than does Condorcet RCV.  STAR is also N².  But Hare RCV is floor((e-1)N!)-1 which is much worse, essentially proscribing local precinct tabulation and yet there are statewide RCV elections (that take two weeks to report the election outcome).

I just don't see what the problem is other than some theoretical academic navel gazing.

--

r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj at audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

.
.
.