Re: Condorcet Voting and Supermajorities (Re: [CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT] Disambiguation of 4.1.5)

[Raul Miller <moth@debian.org>]

On Tue, Dec 05, 2000 at 12:32:12AM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> > > The Condorcet criterion says that if there's a single option that
> > > pairwise beats every other option, it should win (assuming there's no
> > > supermajority requirement, and quorum is met).

> > That's a relatively weak criterion, all things considered.

On Mon, Dec 04, 2000 at 11:35:45PM -0500, Buddha Buck wrote:
> "All things considered" just being:
> 
> -- it doesn't deal with supermajorities
> -- it doesn't deal with quorum issues
> -- it doesn't state what should happen if there isn't a single option
>    that pairwise beats every other option.

I was refering to this last one.

> > > It's what the current A.6(2) and A.6(3) are for. (The Condorcet criterion
> > > doesn't say anything about the ambiguous cases we've been talking about)
> > 
> > I thought we'd agreed that they are to ensure that the Smith criterion
> > is met (which is more specific than the Condorcet criterion).
> 
> If A.6(3) is supposed to reduce the options to the Smith set, it is 
> very poorly written.

I guess this depends on whether you think that Dominates means "pairwise
beats" or "transitively beats".  I think it means "transitively beats".

I do see that other people (you, anthony) disagree with me, and I
think that's sufficient reason to consider a constitutional amendment
to resolve this issue.  [I'd like to achieve agreement on a few other
issues, however, before I propose anything formal.]

Thanks,

-- 
Raul