Re: Ties in Elections

On Fri, Feb 07, 2003 at 07:23:42AM -0500, Dale E Martin wrote:
> I think of it in terms of "I like these three people, and I prefer 'none of
> the above' to the other two". As long as that's what not filling out the
> entire ballot means I think we're OK. A corner case of this would be
> turning in a blank ballot (or one where 'none of the above' was the only
> choice.)
>
> I don't want to start another huge discussion about voting mechanisms, but
> I wanted to point out why "none of the above" could be a valid choice in
> such an election.

Oh, certainly. I agree that such an option permits an added degree of
expressiveness, which is a valuable thing. My point was simply that I'm
not sure if this is a characteristic of the Condorcet Method per se.
And any twiddle to the Condorcet method *might* vitiate some of its
desirable properties (one has to do some formal analysis to find out).

I probably need to go refresh my memory at electionmethods.org.

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G. Branden Robinson, Treasurer
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