<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt"><DIV>Aaron,<BR>I agree that not electing a voted CW is undesirable, and any method<BR>that fails the Condorcet criterion needs to be justified by complying</DIV>
<DIV>with at least one desirable criterion that isn't compatible with Condorcet.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>"Low social utility (SU)" Condorcet winners with little solid support and</DIV>
<DIV>depend for their status as the CW on weakly-held lower preferences can</DIV>
<DIV>begin to look quite chimera-like and not necessarily the only legitimate<BR>winner.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>One ok Condorcet method is Smith,IRV: voters strictly rank from the <BR>top however many candidates they wish, before each normal IRV </DIV>
<DIV>elimination check for a candidate X that pairwise beats all the other </DIV>
<DIV>remaining candidates, elect the first such X to appear.</DIV>
<DIV><BR>Is this what you mean by "Smith/IRV"? Or did you mean "Smith//IRV"?</DIV>
<DIV><BR>I'm not sure if you suggested otherwise, but all methods that meet the</DIV>
<DIV>Condorcet criterion are vulnerable to Burial strategy.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Chris Benham</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><STRONG></STRONG> </DIV>
<DIV><STRONG><BR>Aaron Armitage</STRONG> wrote (Sat.Oct.11):<BR>Condorcet methods are the application of majority rule to elections which<BR>have more than two candidates and which cannot sequester the electorate<BR>for however many rounds it takes to produce a majority first-preference<BR>winner. If we consider majoritarianism an irreducible part of democracy,<BR>then any method which fails to elect the CW if one exists is unacceptable.<BR><BR>Which particular method is chosen depends on what you want it to do. For<BR>example, if we at to make it difficult to change the outcome with<BR>strategic voting Smith/IRV would be best, because most strategic voting<BR>will be burying a potential CW to create an artificial cycle in the hopes<BR>that a more-preferred candidate will be chosen by the completion method. A<BR>completion method which is also vulnerable to burial makes this worse, but<BR>Smith/IRV isn't because it breaks the cycle in a way the ignores
all<BR>non-first rankings.<BR><BR></DIV></div><br>
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