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<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: times new roman, new york, times, serif; FONT-SIZE: 12pt"><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">From:</SPAN></B> James Gilmour <jgilmour@globalnet.co.uk><BR></FONT><BR>>But suppose the votes had been (again ignoring irrelevant preferences):<BR>> 48 A>C<BR>> 47 B>C<BR>> 5 C <BR>>"C" is still the Condorcet winner - no question about that. But I doubt whether anyone could successfully sell such a result to the<BR>>electorate, at least, not here in the UK.<BR><BR>>And I have severe doubts about how effective such a winner could be in office. Quite apart from the sceptical electorate, the<BR>>politicians of Party A and of Party B would be hounding such an office-holder daily. And the media would be no help - they would<BR>>just pour fuel on the flames. The result would be political chaos and totally
ineffective government.<BR><BR>>The flaw in IRV is that it can, sometimes, fail to elect the Condorcet winner. But IRV avoids the "political" problem of the weak<BR>>Condorcet winner. I suspect that's why IRV has been accepted for many public and semi-public elections despite the Condorcet flaw.<BR><BR>>James Gilmour<BR></DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: times new roman, new york, times, serif; FONT-SIZE: 12pt">I don't think I would have a problem with C winning here, if the votes were all sincere. But that's the problem. They might not be. A and B supporters might just be putting C ahead of their perceived main rival. I suppose this is similar to the "DH3" problem - <A href="http://rangevoting.org/DH3.html">http://rangevoting.org/DH3.html</A> - except with two main rivals instead of three. As far as I understand, range, approval and Majority Judgement should do OK here (and not forgetting SODA of course).</DIV>
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<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: times new roman, new york, times, serif; FONT-SIZE: 12pt">But in the sincere case, every voter has ranked C above one of A or B, and if it happened that C and only one of A and B were running, then C would win and no-one would be bothered at all.</DIV>
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<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: times new roman, new york, times, serif; FONT-SIZE: 12pt">Toby<VAR id=yui-ie-cursor></VAR></DIV></DIV></div></body></html>