[EM] Novel Electoral System

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

On 2025-05-16 01:24, Daniel Kirslis via Election-Methods wrote:
> Hello!
> 
> I am a newcomer to this mailing list, so please forgive me if this 
> message violates any norms or protocols that the members of this list 
> adhere to.

Welcome :-)

> Given its simplicity, I have been very surprised to discover that this 
> method has never been proposed before. I am hoping that some of you all 
> will take a look at the paper and share your comments, questions, and 
> critiques.

I would have to look more in detail to see if this has been asked in the 
paper already, but the obvious things to ask about for Borda and 
Borda-hybrids are whether they pass majority and what kind of clone 
incentives exist, if any. Borda sometimes fails majority and it does 
have a pretty serious teaming incentive. Do you know anything about its 
performance on either criterion?

In another post, you mentioned that Condorcet can produce some, in your 
opinion, unreasonable edge cases. Do you think the same holds for the 
majority criterion? E.g.

5001: A>B>C
4999: B>C>A

A Borda proponent could argue that A is too divisive by being ranked 
last by the minority, but B is not ranked last by anyone and so should 
be elected instead.

> Ultimately, it is my hope that ranked-choice voting advocates 
> can arrive at a consensus about the best method for RCV and thus 
> strengthen efforts to adopt it and deliver much needed democratic 
> improvements. But even if you don't find the system itself compelling, 
> you may find the method of plotting electoral outcomes elucidated in the 
> paper to be useful for the analysis of other electoral systems.

I'm a Condorcetist, so I may be biased, but the last poll we did listed 
the EM participants' favorite methods to be ranked pairs and Benham's 
method. The former if strategic voting is not a problem, the latter if 
it is.

Then there are some people who prefer IRV, and a third group that 
prefers cardinal methods. The problem, though, isn't as much division 
among EM members as it is division outside EM. (Good luck getting 
FairVote to change their position from IRV!)

Perhaps I underestimate the potential of compromise methods. But the 
different groups outside EM seem to be quite set in their preferences. 
The us-or-them dynamics of FPTP is unfortunately too prevalent.

-km