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Currently there is no reference for the example used in the 'defeat strength' section. Does anyone have a reference for that example? 81.129.133.255 ( talk) 17:29, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
I removed some links in the 'Use of Condorcet voting' section- my original though was that they were spam links, but after checking the history I realized that they were actually (non-notable) sites that used a Condorcet voting method. I'm leaving them removed for now, but if someone cares enough to put them back they should be able to. Paladinwannabe2 20:16, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
Dear Iota, you have added 4 uses of Nanson's method. However, if I understand McLean's paper correctly, then 3 of these 4 uses are out of date. Markus Schulze 09:05, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
The website of the University of Adelaide says that its council is elected by proportional representation by the single transferable vote [1]. Therefore, it seems to me that all four examples for uses of Nanson's method are out of date. Markus Schulze 20:47, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
I have removed the examples for the use of Nanson's method. According to McLean's paper, the University of Melbourne abandoned Nanson's method in 1983. According to footnote no. 7 of his paper, also the Anglican diocese of Melbourne abandoned this method. According to the website of the University of Adelaide, its council is elected by proportional representation by the single transferable vote [2]. Markus Schulze 19:33, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
I've created Landau set -- I thought I'd mention it here since this is the only article I've noticed that links there. Comments are welcome. CRGreathouse ( talk • contribs) 06:23, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
I think the definition of the Landau set in this article is wrong. According to this post, instead of
the definition should be
The definition in Landau set is also wrong; instead of
it should read
Smoerz 14:45, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
Can anyone add an example to illustrate Condorcet fails these, and explain whether or not it is a valid concern? — ChristTrekker 21:25, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
I find this a fascinating subject, but I fear that this article is just a little bit opaque for most people (myself included!) I think the article, as it stands, spends much too much time on minutiae, especially right at the beginning of the article. For example, right from the 2nd sentence starts it starts defining new terms (condorcet winner, condorcet criterion) which really aren't essential to understanding the basic concept.
It may be that it just requires a new paragraph at the start that sets out the following:
Once that's done, a more in-depth exploration of the system with examples and all the theory and terminology would be appropriate, but not without giving an overview. Jaddle 02:13, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
This section seems to be unclear or worded incorrectly. It says:
"Like most voting methods, Condorcet methods are vulnerable to compromising. That is, voters can help avoid the election of a less-preferred candidate by insincerely raising the position of a more-preferred candidate on their ballot."
The idea of the Condorcet method is that people DO vote in order of preference. So it's assumed that people will "raise the position" of their preferred candidate over the ranking they give of a less-preferred candidate. That's not compromising or tactical voting. That's voting as it is intended by the Condorcet method.
Since to win in Condorcet voting, a candidate must beat every other candidate head to head, the only "tactical voting" I could see would be to rank a less-preferred candidate insincerely by ranking that candidate better than a more-preferred candidate in order for there to be no clear winner, should the most-preferred candidate fail to win overall.
For example, take Republican voters that want to elect a Republican. They could all agree to vote their preferences on the Republican candidates, but then for ranking Democrats, they all agree to rank the unlikely candidate Mike Gravel as their first Democratic choice, even if this candidate is their least preferred Democrat. Then, even if a popular Democrat like Clinton or Obama beats the Republican candidates, Mike Gravel could beat that Democrat in a head to head comparison, leading to there being no clear winner. The leading Democrat would beat the Republicans, the Republicans would beat Mike Gravel, and Mike Gravel would beat the leading Democrat. This would be tactical voting that wasn't intended by the method.
Though whether that would be effective in accomplishing anything would depend on how ties like that are resolved. Timofmars 21:54, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
Why is there a comparison to IRV in this section but not a comparison to other methods? This seems like an attempt to market Condorcet methods over IRV rather than an objective evaluation of Condorcet. Progressnerd ( talk) 01:09, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
The discussion of "burying" seems to be somewhat limited. In a three candidate race, if the two leading candidates engage in insincere burying, then that could cause the election of the Condorcet loser. The tactical voting section only mentions the introduction of a Condorcet cycle, but not of the potential of electing a weaker candidate. Should such a discussion be added? Progressnerd ( talk) 03:43, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
I reverted the deletion of the statement that Condorcet methods are only vulnerable to compromising when a cycle is involved, and that IRV is vulnerable to compromising even without a cycle. It is easy to show both of these.
Take this scenario in IRV:
7 A>B 2 B 6 C>B
A wins, but the C voters can secure B's election by compromising in ranking B higher. Note that there is not a Condorcet cycle on these ballots.
Perhaps the Condorcet claim can be worded differently, but the point is that when there's a Condorcet winner, you can't get a better result by compromising unless you create a cycle by ranking the Condorcet winner beneath a candidate you like less. Why is this the only way? Because the alternative to creating a cycle is that you turn the "candidate you like less" into the Condorcet winner when you raise him (which obviously you don't have incentive to cause). No other candidate can become the Condorcet winner when you do this, because everybody else will still be losing pairwise to the original winner.
Incidentally, better Condorcet methods such as Schulze method also have the property that if more than half of the voters prefer A to B, and don't vote for B, then this majority doesn't have to compromise at all in order to ensure that B loses. (Think of B as the worse frontrunner, for instance.) KVenzke 01:59, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
I am confused about the Condorcet criterion. That article says that the Condorcet winner is the candidate who wins all of her "one-on-one" contests with the other candidates. However, this article says (in the Summary section) that:
In other words, a candidate just needs to have more one-on-one wins than any other, not win all of her head-to-head matchups. Which statement is right (or have I just misinterpreted the text)? Molinari ( talk) 21:43, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
In the introduction it says "There are then multiple, slightly differing methods for calculating the winner, due to the need to resolve circular ambiguities—including the Kemeny-Young method, Ranked Pairs, and the Schulze method." Mentioning this so early in the article is really overstating the potential for this to come into play.
The article about plurality voting doesn't mention ties at all, while 1/3 of this article is about resolving "circular ambiguities," a.k.a. ties. Do you know why the article on plurality voting doesn't mention ties? Because ties rarely happen in real elections, and when they do happen, they aren't resolved by tie-breaking algorithms but rather by lawers contesting ballot after ballot until the race is no longer close enough to a tie that the feel the need to continue.
To mention tie-breaking algorithms is simply to make Condorcet sound more difficult than it is. It's very simple. Everyone lists candidates in the order they prefer them. We then pretend we're having one-on-one elections between each pair of candidates and we decide how each voter would vote in these elections based on their ballots. When we're done it's rather obvious who the winner should be. There wasn't a tie. There rarely ever is. If there had been, we surely could have flipped a coin or drawn names from a hat. Simple, yes?
...but, no. Then someone comes along with a matrix which no normal person understands, seemingly for no reason other than a desire to overwhelm people with "here's how you'd do it if you were a computer," then several other people come along with various algorithms which, in the case of those very rare ties, try to read more out of the ballots than is actually there, seemingly because they cannot accept the fact that a tie is a tie, and before you know it, your average person thinks that Condorcet is the most complicated thing they've ever seen, that people everywhere are in disagreement about how exactly to implement it, and so, for all we know, maybe that much simpler instant runoff voting is the best way to do things.
...and then we get to "potential for tactical voting..." The answer is that there is none. It's these tie-breaking algorithms that have flaws, not Condorcet. ...but no, let's just pretend like Condorcet has no advantages whatsoever against other voting methods. When we find it has an advantage, let's tack something on to it to remove that advantage, then pretend like that something is an integral part of it.
Honestly...
One day I was thinking about voting methods and I came up with this wonderful way to conduct an election, and when I told someone about it, they pointed me to Condorcet voting. I read about it for an hour or two, and came back with "well, I'm not sure, but I think they're talking about the same thing I've thought of." Indeed, they were, but it was all stated in terms so complex that, even having the same idea in my head at that very moment, I still couldn't understand what they were talking about. That's when you know an explaination sucks.
It wasn't Wikipedia I was reading that day, but this article half-way in the same boat. Condorcet is a simple, clear, and obviously correct algorithm. There's no reason to make it sound so confusing and questionable.
Here are my suggestions:
Speak only of straight plain Condorcet at the beginning of the article, completely ignoring the possibility of ties. Describe the ballots and the counting in ways that average people who aren't computer programmers and who have probably never seen a matrix in their life can understand. Toss in some examples, like that awesome Tenessee example. It's excellent. It shows how to evaluate the ballots using the "this vs. that" method, it's an example that provides different outcomes vs. plurality and instant runoff. The only thing I can think to change is that I would mention that, while plurality would select Memphis as the winner because it received the most votes, the majority of voters listed Memphis as their last choice, which makes a serious statement about why Memphis should not be the winner of the election. It says something when an election method picks the same winner for "which city should be the capital" and "which city should not be the capital." Finally, if you must, include a small section at the end to discuss those "circular ambiguities" everyone is so facinated with, but be certain to mention that they are as rare as ties in any election and that, in addition to the many silly methods people have developed to resolve them, we could also just draw a name from a hat, thereby keeping things simple and avoiding the possibility of "tactile voting." I'd toss the actual descriptions of tie-breaking algorithms into subpages or seperate articles as it seems silly that so much of the article should be about details which so rarely come into play, and that's only if one chooses to allow them to come into play at all rather than doing something else entirely. -- The one and only Pj ( talk) 04:29, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
Quote: Since Condorcet voting guarantees to elect the centrist candidate, if there is any winner, extremist candidates would soon learn that they can't win by telling the truth if Condorcet is used. Condorcet elections may promote candidates using insincere campaigning to sound like the most centrist of the bunch. Voters would then learn the winner's true motives once they are elected.
In brief, "Candidates may lie to get elected." This does not add anything to the article, and I daresay that candidates may lie under any voting system to appeal to the most voters.
Nor will any voting system prevent such misrepresentation. In the case mentioned above, in a Condorcet election, an extremist would need to run to the center of the political spectrum rather than stay on the fringe. The argument seems to be saying that an otherwise honest fringe candidate would be tempted to lie in order to win the election. Is it really better to have someone saying nutty things from the fringe than the same person saying relatively sane things from the center? "IRV allows non-mainstream candidates to win without appealing to the center" doesn't seem to be a plus.
With Instant Runoff Voting, candidates have a larger incentive to campaign sincerely for the vote of like minded voters. Vote splitting is not the issue some claim it is, since votes will only be distributed to that nearby candidate, and the voters in that part of the spectrum are best able to judge, and are the only ones hurt if they judge wrong.
See above. A dishonest candidate will go to where the most votes are, and it would seem that a candidate with some history of being in the center would have an advantage over someone who recently saw the virtue of being a centrist. And votes will be distributed to the nearest candidate still in the race after previous rounds, not necessarily the next preferred candidate if that candidate has already been dropped.
The first sections of this article were HORRIBLY written! Look at this first line of the definition:
"A Condorcet method is a voting system that will always elect the Condorcet winner; this is the candidate whom voters prefer to each other candidate, when compared to them one at a time."
Rule #1 of writing a definition: NEVER use a word to define itself! For someone who doesn't know what "Condorcet" is in reference to, this definition is completely meaningless and confusing. On top of that, the wording itself is needlessly convoluted and verbose.
The introduction suffers these same problems as well, as do numerous other parts of the article. I originally just put a section cleanup tag in the definition section, but after trying to decipher this article in its entirety and after reading previous comments in talk regarding this same issue ("Request for a better introduction"), I no longer feel that is sufficient.
The definition at the very start of the article is even worse: "A Condorcet method is any single-winner election method that meets the Condorcet criterion, that is, which always selects the Condorcet winner, the candidate who would beat each of the other candidates in a run-off election, if such a candidate exists."
In other words.... "Huh?!"
Therefore, I'm taking the drastic step of applying a total rewrite tag for the entire article. This thing should be about a third, *maybe* half the size it is now. And the wording needs to be scrapped and done from scratch.
On top of all that, many critical sections (most notably, the summary and definition) have absolutely NO CITATIONS whatsoever! So I'm gonna add a tag for that as well. Hopefully somebody with a lot of time on their hands will step up and re-do this nightmarish mess of an article. 67.183.129.249 ( talk) 07:34, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
I believe that this section needs to be either deleted or revised. It states that the Condorcet criterion implies single-peaked preferences, but argues this on an example where there is no Condorcet winner. It also treats the pair-wise comparisons sequentially whereas Condorcet methods should view all these comparisons simultaneously. Kolacinski ( talk) 15:03, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
To get single peaked preferences, you assume that all political positions can be modeled along a line, left to right. Each voter has a particular "Bliss Point" and his or her preferences are determined by the candidates' distances from this point. It's a restriction of Arrow's Universality condition. Kolacinski ( talk) 18:40, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
The Condorcet criterion doesn't require single peaked preferences. On the other side, when the preferences are single-peaked, then there is always a Condorcet winner. Markus Schulze 16:52, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
There are several inaccuracies above. (1) Voters' preferences can be single-peaked even if the number of issue dimensions is greater than one. (2) If there are two or more dimensions, single-peaked preferences do not imply a Condorcet winner point exists; see McKelvey's majority chaos theorem. (3) The Condorcet criterion does not assume voters' preferences are single-peaked; there may be a Condorcet winner even when voters' preferences are not single-peaked and there may be a Condorcet winner even when the alternatives do not lie on a single dimension, and the criterion says it should be elected (regardless of whether the voters' preferences are single-peaked or whether the alternatives are on a single dimension). Regarding the definition of single-peaked: A voter's preferences are single-peaked if the voter has a favorite point and the voter prefers point x over point y whenever x is between y and her favorite point. (In one dimension, the meaning of 'between' is clear. In two or more dimensions, if there is a way to define betweenness so that all voters' preferences are single-peaked, then the voters' preferences are single-peaked.) Note that single-peakedness implies more than a single peak; the voter's preferences are also not flat anywhere. (In other words, the voter isn't indifferent between any two points that are both on the same side of his/her favorite point.) SEppley ( talk) 11:55, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
Why can't Condorcet be used for multiple-winner elections? I think that would be useful to address in this article, and I'm personally very curious. — Darxus ( talk) 05:13, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
"Where this kind of spectrum exists and voters prefer candidates who are closest to their own position on the spectrum there is a Condorcet winner (Black's Single-Peakedness Theorem). Real political spectra, however, are at least two dimensional, with some political scientists advocating three dimensional models."
This is at odds with modern empirical political science. It's actually possible to estimate the latent dimension of ideological space by applying IRT to roll-call matrices and opinion polls. While there are some political systems that seem to be two-dimensional, that's because of regionalism (Canada and Quebec separatism, Civil Rights in the US during the 60's, etc). As of now, the vast majority of political systems that have been analysed, including the US's right now, seem to be overwhelmingly one dimensional (Roughly 94% of roll-call votes in the US congress, for example, can be predicted with a one-dimensional model). The only body I'm aware of that has a dimension greater than two is the general assembly.
This is at odds with a lot of commentary you see about social and economic issues forming their own spectrum. But empirically, people's views on social and economic matters are almost perfectly correlated when it comes to deciding actual political issues in the US.
The other thing worth mentioning is that non-condorcet outcomes, while theoretically being possible in higher-dimensional systems, are *extremely rare* as the number of voters approaches infinity. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dynotec ( talk • contribs) 06:08, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
The section about Kemeny-Young makes an unreferenced claim about executing "in seconds" when there are 40 candidates. Discussion in the Talk page of the main K-Y article indicates this claim has not been established. I inserted the word some (some cases) in the claim to make it more closely match the weaker claim made in the main K-Y article. SEppley ( talk) 10:38, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
Can someone add the pronunciation? I am guessing it is con-door-say, but I have never heard it in conversation, and have no background in French. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.177.104.111 ( talk) 14:16, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
Is the image of the ballot with John Citizen and Mary Doe useful? The article already contains an example from a wikimedia election as well as numerous in article tables depicting ballots. The John Citizen ballot is cartoonish in my opinion and does little except take up space. DouglasCalvert ( talk) 04:08, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
The sentence "The concise rule that defines a Condorcet method can be stated in a single sentence: "If more voters mark their ballots that they prefer Candidate A over Candidate B for office than the number of voters who mark their ballots to the contrary, then Candidate B is not elected."" sounds incorrect to me. It suggests that a Condorcet method must elect no candidate in the case of a condorcet cyle and I think that's incorrect. clahey ( talk) 19:10, 2 February 2017 (UTC)
In my last edit to this article, I modified the matrix format for the Tennessee example to make the results for the pairwise matchups easier to understand. We evolved this format over in the Burlington mayoral election, 2009 article. One tweak that I'm hoping to make is to also use a css trick or two from the header of the old version of the matrix. I started making the change, but gave up mid-way. This is what I didn't save:
1st | Nashville [N] | 3 Wins ↓
| |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
2nd | Chattanooga [C] | 1 Loss → ↓ 2 Wins
|
[N] 68% [C] 32% | ||
3rd | Knoxville [K] | 2 Losses → ↓ 1 Win
|
[C] 83% [K] 17% |
[N] 68% [K] 32% | |
4th | Memphis [M] | 3 Losses → | [K] 58% [M] 42% |
[C] 58% [M] 42% |
[N] 58% [M] 42% |
Anyone have the skill to make it so that the "↓ X Wins" portion of the headers in the split cells align in the bottom right left, and the "Y Losses →" part aligns in the top right? --
RobLa (
talk)
00:33, 10 August 2018 (UTC)
The "Other Considerations" section appears to be conjecture about various things. John Moser ( talk) 13:48, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
This paragraph doesn't seem to be written from a neutral viewpoint and doesn't have the Wikipedia "voice". See: "Plurality voting is simple, and theoretically provides incentives for voters to compromise for centrist candidates rather than throw away their votes on candidates who can't win." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.103.12.238 ( talk) 08:20, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
I'm requesting approval for the new article at Pairwise vote counting (draft), which also involves a "split request."
The new article overlaps the sub-section here titled 'Pairwise counting and matrices'.
A separate Pairwise Vote Counting article is needed for these reasons:
The new article combines the content here with content from a peer-edited and peer-reviewed article at https://electowiki.org/wiki/Pairwise_counting. (Yes, copying from that source is permitted.) In other words, this is not a solo effort.
In advance, thank you for help approving this new article, moving it out of the "draft" space into the full Wikipedia space, adding the link to it within this article, and changing the shortcut pairwise counting which currently points to the sub-section here. VoteFair ( talk) 18:34, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
AngusWOOF: Above I've requested the split request you said was needed to add the new 'Pairwise Vote Counting' article. There has been no response. Is there something else I need to do? VoteFair ( talk) 04:53, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
There’s a proposal in the Condorcet method talk page which I don’t support but which I think contains a lot of sense. It says that
There is no such thing as "the Condorcet method"... There is no reason to discuss the methods [i.e. methods satisfying the Condorcet criterion] collectively in a separate article from the criterion...
In my view there is such a thing as the Condorcet method which is this:
This is certainly an incomplete method, but then the Copeland method is incomplete because of its proneness to ties, and in practice there’s always a remote possibility of ties in symmetric elections. Voting methods need to decide in advance what to do if they arise, but this is hardly ever specified.
Nonetheless people may feel loyalty to incomplete methods, particularly if they feel that failure to produce a clear winner is unlikely to happen, and that the decision of what to do in this case is a minor detail. They may investigate the mathematical properties of incomplete methods, as has certainly been done for the ‘Condorcet method’. [1]
So my proposal is that this article should be limited to the method as I have described it. Black’s and Copeland’s methods should be mentioned as refinements, just as the Dasgupta-Maskin method is a refinement of Copeland’s. There should be no discussion of Condorcet’s criterion or of methods whose only relevance lies in satisfying it. This would lead to a more focused article.
I think it causes confusion that Copeland’s method has an entry in the big comparison table and Condorcet’s doesn’t, because it implies a difference in status between them. Since there is a column for resolvability, and since failure to give a result is equivalent to giving an n-way tie, it seems to me that Condorcet’s method should have a row (perhaps the same as Black’s without resolvability). Presumably the Dasgupta-Maskin method could be given an entry which differs from Copeland’s only in resolvability. Colin.champion ( talk) 13:42, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
Well, I withdraw my suggestion, partly because of RobLo’s comments and other observations elsewhere, and partly because it flies in the face of history. Although Condorcet’s method is often presented as incomplete, he had his own way of completing it which boils down to a clumsy approach to the Kemeny-Young method. (I mean clumsy relative to modern understanding of estimation theory, which was in its infancy when Condorcet wrote.) If people don’t say much about it, it’s because no one likes it. But the name ‘Condorcet’s method’ cannot be appropriated to a method contradicting Condorcet’s own.
So I suggest that the best course is to trim this article, reducing it to the statement that the term ‘Condorcet method’ is applied to any method satisfying the Condorcet criterion, and summarising the different ways in which they extend the criterion. Colin.champion ( talk) 10:40, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
There was a short(-ish) description of what a Condorcet method is, which stated "Election method that elects the candidate who wins a majority of the vote in every head-to-head election against each of the other candidates". Sure, that's a little long (143 characters by my count), but the first few paragraphs of this article are also pretty long. The new description (as of 09:38, 12 April 2022 (UTC)) is "Preferential electoral system", which is way too short (since it doesn't distinguish it from instant-runoff voting, for example). I suspect it's going to need to be more than 40 characters long; User:X201, where is the specific guidance about number of characters that you're suggesting? -- RobLa ( talk) 09:38, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
References
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Currently there is no reference for the example used in the 'defeat strength' section. Does anyone have a reference for that example? 81.129.133.255 ( talk) 17:29, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
I removed some links in the 'Use of Condorcet voting' section- my original though was that they were spam links, but after checking the history I realized that they were actually (non-notable) sites that used a Condorcet voting method. I'm leaving them removed for now, but if someone cares enough to put them back they should be able to. Paladinwannabe2 20:16, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
Dear Iota, you have added 4 uses of Nanson's method. However, if I understand McLean's paper correctly, then 3 of these 4 uses are out of date. Markus Schulze 09:05, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
The website of the University of Adelaide says that its council is elected by proportional representation by the single transferable vote [1]. Therefore, it seems to me that all four examples for uses of Nanson's method are out of date. Markus Schulze 20:47, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
I have removed the examples for the use of Nanson's method. According to McLean's paper, the University of Melbourne abandoned Nanson's method in 1983. According to footnote no. 7 of his paper, also the Anglican diocese of Melbourne abandoned this method. According to the website of the University of Adelaide, its council is elected by proportional representation by the single transferable vote [2]. Markus Schulze 19:33, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
I've created Landau set -- I thought I'd mention it here since this is the only article I've noticed that links there. Comments are welcome. CRGreathouse ( talk • contribs) 06:23, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
I think the definition of the Landau set in this article is wrong. According to this post, instead of
the definition should be
The definition in Landau set is also wrong; instead of
it should read
Smoerz 14:45, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
Can anyone add an example to illustrate Condorcet fails these, and explain whether or not it is a valid concern? — ChristTrekker 21:25, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
I find this a fascinating subject, but I fear that this article is just a little bit opaque for most people (myself included!) I think the article, as it stands, spends much too much time on minutiae, especially right at the beginning of the article. For example, right from the 2nd sentence starts it starts defining new terms (condorcet winner, condorcet criterion) which really aren't essential to understanding the basic concept.
It may be that it just requires a new paragraph at the start that sets out the following:
Once that's done, a more in-depth exploration of the system with examples and all the theory and terminology would be appropriate, but not without giving an overview. Jaddle 02:13, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
This section seems to be unclear or worded incorrectly. It says:
"Like most voting methods, Condorcet methods are vulnerable to compromising. That is, voters can help avoid the election of a less-preferred candidate by insincerely raising the position of a more-preferred candidate on their ballot."
The idea of the Condorcet method is that people DO vote in order of preference. So it's assumed that people will "raise the position" of their preferred candidate over the ranking they give of a less-preferred candidate. That's not compromising or tactical voting. That's voting as it is intended by the Condorcet method.
Since to win in Condorcet voting, a candidate must beat every other candidate head to head, the only "tactical voting" I could see would be to rank a less-preferred candidate insincerely by ranking that candidate better than a more-preferred candidate in order for there to be no clear winner, should the most-preferred candidate fail to win overall.
For example, take Republican voters that want to elect a Republican. They could all agree to vote their preferences on the Republican candidates, but then for ranking Democrats, they all agree to rank the unlikely candidate Mike Gravel as their first Democratic choice, even if this candidate is their least preferred Democrat. Then, even if a popular Democrat like Clinton or Obama beats the Republican candidates, Mike Gravel could beat that Democrat in a head to head comparison, leading to there being no clear winner. The leading Democrat would beat the Republicans, the Republicans would beat Mike Gravel, and Mike Gravel would beat the leading Democrat. This would be tactical voting that wasn't intended by the method.
Though whether that would be effective in accomplishing anything would depend on how ties like that are resolved. Timofmars 21:54, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
Why is there a comparison to IRV in this section but not a comparison to other methods? This seems like an attempt to market Condorcet methods over IRV rather than an objective evaluation of Condorcet. Progressnerd ( talk) 01:09, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
The discussion of "burying" seems to be somewhat limited. In a three candidate race, if the two leading candidates engage in insincere burying, then that could cause the election of the Condorcet loser. The tactical voting section only mentions the introduction of a Condorcet cycle, but not of the potential of electing a weaker candidate. Should such a discussion be added? Progressnerd ( talk) 03:43, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
I reverted the deletion of the statement that Condorcet methods are only vulnerable to compromising when a cycle is involved, and that IRV is vulnerable to compromising even without a cycle. It is easy to show both of these.
Take this scenario in IRV:
7 A>B 2 B 6 C>B
A wins, but the C voters can secure B's election by compromising in ranking B higher. Note that there is not a Condorcet cycle on these ballots.
Perhaps the Condorcet claim can be worded differently, but the point is that when there's a Condorcet winner, you can't get a better result by compromising unless you create a cycle by ranking the Condorcet winner beneath a candidate you like less. Why is this the only way? Because the alternative to creating a cycle is that you turn the "candidate you like less" into the Condorcet winner when you raise him (which obviously you don't have incentive to cause). No other candidate can become the Condorcet winner when you do this, because everybody else will still be losing pairwise to the original winner.
Incidentally, better Condorcet methods such as Schulze method also have the property that if more than half of the voters prefer A to B, and don't vote for B, then this majority doesn't have to compromise at all in order to ensure that B loses. (Think of B as the worse frontrunner, for instance.) KVenzke 01:59, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
I am confused about the Condorcet criterion. That article says that the Condorcet winner is the candidate who wins all of her "one-on-one" contests with the other candidates. However, this article says (in the Summary section) that:
In other words, a candidate just needs to have more one-on-one wins than any other, not win all of her head-to-head matchups. Which statement is right (or have I just misinterpreted the text)? Molinari ( talk) 21:43, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
In the introduction it says "There are then multiple, slightly differing methods for calculating the winner, due to the need to resolve circular ambiguities—including the Kemeny-Young method, Ranked Pairs, and the Schulze method." Mentioning this so early in the article is really overstating the potential for this to come into play.
The article about plurality voting doesn't mention ties at all, while 1/3 of this article is about resolving "circular ambiguities," a.k.a. ties. Do you know why the article on plurality voting doesn't mention ties? Because ties rarely happen in real elections, and when they do happen, they aren't resolved by tie-breaking algorithms but rather by lawers contesting ballot after ballot until the race is no longer close enough to a tie that the feel the need to continue.
To mention tie-breaking algorithms is simply to make Condorcet sound more difficult than it is. It's very simple. Everyone lists candidates in the order they prefer them. We then pretend we're having one-on-one elections between each pair of candidates and we decide how each voter would vote in these elections based on their ballots. When we're done it's rather obvious who the winner should be. There wasn't a tie. There rarely ever is. If there had been, we surely could have flipped a coin or drawn names from a hat. Simple, yes?
...but, no. Then someone comes along with a matrix which no normal person understands, seemingly for no reason other than a desire to overwhelm people with "here's how you'd do it if you were a computer," then several other people come along with various algorithms which, in the case of those very rare ties, try to read more out of the ballots than is actually there, seemingly because they cannot accept the fact that a tie is a tie, and before you know it, your average person thinks that Condorcet is the most complicated thing they've ever seen, that people everywhere are in disagreement about how exactly to implement it, and so, for all we know, maybe that much simpler instant runoff voting is the best way to do things.
...and then we get to "potential for tactical voting..." The answer is that there is none. It's these tie-breaking algorithms that have flaws, not Condorcet. ...but no, let's just pretend like Condorcet has no advantages whatsoever against other voting methods. When we find it has an advantage, let's tack something on to it to remove that advantage, then pretend like that something is an integral part of it.
Honestly...
One day I was thinking about voting methods and I came up with this wonderful way to conduct an election, and when I told someone about it, they pointed me to Condorcet voting. I read about it for an hour or two, and came back with "well, I'm not sure, but I think they're talking about the same thing I've thought of." Indeed, they were, but it was all stated in terms so complex that, even having the same idea in my head at that very moment, I still couldn't understand what they were talking about. That's when you know an explaination sucks.
It wasn't Wikipedia I was reading that day, but this article half-way in the same boat. Condorcet is a simple, clear, and obviously correct algorithm. There's no reason to make it sound so confusing and questionable.
Here are my suggestions:
Speak only of straight plain Condorcet at the beginning of the article, completely ignoring the possibility of ties. Describe the ballots and the counting in ways that average people who aren't computer programmers and who have probably never seen a matrix in their life can understand. Toss in some examples, like that awesome Tenessee example. It's excellent. It shows how to evaluate the ballots using the "this vs. that" method, it's an example that provides different outcomes vs. plurality and instant runoff. The only thing I can think to change is that I would mention that, while plurality would select Memphis as the winner because it received the most votes, the majority of voters listed Memphis as their last choice, which makes a serious statement about why Memphis should not be the winner of the election. It says something when an election method picks the same winner for "which city should be the capital" and "which city should not be the capital." Finally, if you must, include a small section at the end to discuss those "circular ambiguities" everyone is so facinated with, but be certain to mention that they are as rare as ties in any election and that, in addition to the many silly methods people have developed to resolve them, we could also just draw a name from a hat, thereby keeping things simple and avoiding the possibility of "tactile voting." I'd toss the actual descriptions of tie-breaking algorithms into subpages or seperate articles as it seems silly that so much of the article should be about details which so rarely come into play, and that's only if one chooses to allow them to come into play at all rather than doing something else entirely. -- The one and only Pj ( talk) 04:29, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
Quote: Since Condorcet voting guarantees to elect the centrist candidate, if there is any winner, extremist candidates would soon learn that they can't win by telling the truth if Condorcet is used. Condorcet elections may promote candidates using insincere campaigning to sound like the most centrist of the bunch. Voters would then learn the winner's true motives once they are elected.
In brief, "Candidates may lie to get elected." This does not add anything to the article, and I daresay that candidates may lie under any voting system to appeal to the most voters.
Nor will any voting system prevent such misrepresentation. In the case mentioned above, in a Condorcet election, an extremist would need to run to the center of the political spectrum rather than stay on the fringe. The argument seems to be saying that an otherwise honest fringe candidate would be tempted to lie in order to win the election. Is it really better to have someone saying nutty things from the fringe than the same person saying relatively sane things from the center? "IRV allows non-mainstream candidates to win without appealing to the center" doesn't seem to be a plus.
With Instant Runoff Voting, candidates have a larger incentive to campaign sincerely for the vote of like minded voters. Vote splitting is not the issue some claim it is, since votes will only be distributed to that nearby candidate, and the voters in that part of the spectrum are best able to judge, and are the only ones hurt if they judge wrong.
See above. A dishonest candidate will go to where the most votes are, and it would seem that a candidate with some history of being in the center would have an advantage over someone who recently saw the virtue of being a centrist. And votes will be distributed to the nearest candidate still in the race after previous rounds, not necessarily the next preferred candidate if that candidate has already been dropped.
The first sections of this article were HORRIBLY written! Look at this first line of the definition:
"A Condorcet method is a voting system that will always elect the Condorcet winner; this is the candidate whom voters prefer to each other candidate, when compared to them one at a time."
Rule #1 of writing a definition: NEVER use a word to define itself! For someone who doesn't know what "Condorcet" is in reference to, this definition is completely meaningless and confusing. On top of that, the wording itself is needlessly convoluted and verbose.
The introduction suffers these same problems as well, as do numerous other parts of the article. I originally just put a section cleanup tag in the definition section, but after trying to decipher this article in its entirety and after reading previous comments in talk regarding this same issue ("Request for a better introduction"), I no longer feel that is sufficient.
The definition at the very start of the article is even worse: "A Condorcet method is any single-winner election method that meets the Condorcet criterion, that is, which always selects the Condorcet winner, the candidate who would beat each of the other candidates in a run-off election, if such a candidate exists."
In other words.... "Huh?!"
Therefore, I'm taking the drastic step of applying a total rewrite tag for the entire article. This thing should be about a third, *maybe* half the size it is now. And the wording needs to be scrapped and done from scratch.
On top of all that, many critical sections (most notably, the summary and definition) have absolutely NO CITATIONS whatsoever! So I'm gonna add a tag for that as well. Hopefully somebody with a lot of time on their hands will step up and re-do this nightmarish mess of an article. 67.183.129.249 ( talk) 07:34, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
I believe that this section needs to be either deleted or revised. It states that the Condorcet criterion implies single-peaked preferences, but argues this on an example where there is no Condorcet winner. It also treats the pair-wise comparisons sequentially whereas Condorcet methods should view all these comparisons simultaneously. Kolacinski ( talk) 15:03, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
To get single peaked preferences, you assume that all political positions can be modeled along a line, left to right. Each voter has a particular "Bliss Point" and his or her preferences are determined by the candidates' distances from this point. It's a restriction of Arrow's Universality condition. Kolacinski ( talk) 18:40, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
The Condorcet criterion doesn't require single peaked preferences. On the other side, when the preferences are single-peaked, then there is always a Condorcet winner. Markus Schulze 16:52, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
There are several inaccuracies above. (1) Voters' preferences can be single-peaked even if the number of issue dimensions is greater than one. (2) If there are two or more dimensions, single-peaked preferences do not imply a Condorcet winner point exists; see McKelvey's majority chaos theorem. (3) The Condorcet criterion does not assume voters' preferences are single-peaked; there may be a Condorcet winner even when voters' preferences are not single-peaked and there may be a Condorcet winner even when the alternatives do not lie on a single dimension, and the criterion says it should be elected (regardless of whether the voters' preferences are single-peaked or whether the alternatives are on a single dimension). Regarding the definition of single-peaked: A voter's preferences are single-peaked if the voter has a favorite point and the voter prefers point x over point y whenever x is between y and her favorite point. (In one dimension, the meaning of 'between' is clear. In two or more dimensions, if there is a way to define betweenness so that all voters' preferences are single-peaked, then the voters' preferences are single-peaked.) Note that single-peakedness implies more than a single peak; the voter's preferences are also not flat anywhere. (In other words, the voter isn't indifferent between any two points that are both on the same side of his/her favorite point.) SEppley ( talk) 11:55, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
Why can't Condorcet be used for multiple-winner elections? I think that would be useful to address in this article, and I'm personally very curious. — Darxus ( talk) 05:13, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
"Where this kind of spectrum exists and voters prefer candidates who are closest to their own position on the spectrum there is a Condorcet winner (Black's Single-Peakedness Theorem). Real political spectra, however, are at least two dimensional, with some political scientists advocating three dimensional models."
This is at odds with modern empirical political science. It's actually possible to estimate the latent dimension of ideological space by applying IRT to roll-call matrices and opinion polls. While there are some political systems that seem to be two-dimensional, that's because of regionalism (Canada and Quebec separatism, Civil Rights in the US during the 60's, etc). As of now, the vast majority of political systems that have been analysed, including the US's right now, seem to be overwhelmingly one dimensional (Roughly 94% of roll-call votes in the US congress, for example, can be predicted with a one-dimensional model). The only body I'm aware of that has a dimension greater than two is the general assembly.
This is at odds with a lot of commentary you see about social and economic issues forming their own spectrum. But empirically, people's views on social and economic matters are almost perfectly correlated when it comes to deciding actual political issues in the US.
The other thing worth mentioning is that non-condorcet outcomes, while theoretically being possible in higher-dimensional systems, are *extremely rare* as the number of voters approaches infinity. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dynotec ( talk • contribs) 06:08, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
The section about Kemeny-Young makes an unreferenced claim about executing "in seconds" when there are 40 candidates. Discussion in the Talk page of the main K-Y article indicates this claim has not been established. I inserted the word some (some cases) in the claim to make it more closely match the weaker claim made in the main K-Y article. SEppley ( talk) 10:38, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
Can someone add the pronunciation? I am guessing it is con-door-say, but I have never heard it in conversation, and have no background in French. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.177.104.111 ( talk) 14:16, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
Is the image of the ballot with John Citizen and Mary Doe useful? The article already contains an example from a wikimedia election as well as numerous in article tables depicting ballots. The John Citizen ballot is cartoonish in my opinion and does little except take up space. DouglasCalvert ( talk) 04:08, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
The sentence "The concise rule that defines a Condorcet method can be stated in a single sentence: "If more voters mark their ballots that they prefer Candidate A over Candidate B for office than the number of voters who mark their ballots to the contrary, then Candidate B is not elected."" sounds incorrect to me. It suggests that a Condorcet method must elect no candidate in the case of a condorcet cyle and I think that's incorrect. clahey ( talk) 19:10, 2 February 2017 (UTC)
In my last edit to this article, I modified the matrix format for the Tennessee example to make the results for the pairwise matchups easier to understand. We evolved this format over in the Burlington mayoral election, 2009 article. One tweak that I'm hoping to make is to also use a css trick or two from the header of the old version of the matrix. I started making the change, but gave up mid-way. This is what I didn't save:
1st | Nashville [N] | 3 Wins ↓
| |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
2nd | Chattanooga [C] | 1 Loss → ↓ 2 Wins
|
[N] 68% [C] 32% | ||
3rd | Knoxville [K] | 2 Losses → ↓ 1 Win
|
[C] 83% [K] 17% |
[N] 68% [K] 32% | |
4th | Memphis [M] | 3 Losses → | [K] 58% [M] 42% |
[C] 58% [M] 42% |
[N] 58% [M] 42% |
Anyone have the skill to make it so that the "↓ X Wins" portion of the headers in the split cells align in the bottom right left, and the "Y Losses →" part aligns in the top right? --
RobLa (
talk)
00:33, 10 August 2018 (UTC)
The "Other Considerations" section appears to be conjecture about various things. John Moser ( talk) 13:48, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
This paragraph doesn't seem to be written from a neutral viewpoint and doesn't have the Wikipedia "voice". See: "Plurality voting is simple, and theoretically provides incentives for voters to compromise for centrist candidates rather than throw away their votes on candidates who can't win." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.103.12.238 ( talk) 08:20, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
I'm requesting approval for the new article at Pairwise vote counting (draft), which also involves a "split request."
The new article overlaps the sub-section here titled 'Pairwise counting and matrices'.
A separate Pairwise Vote Counting article is needed for these reasons:
The new article combines the content here with content from a peer-edited and peer-reviewed article at https://electowiki.org/wiki/Pairwise_counting. (Yes, copying from that source is permitted.) In other words, this is not a solo effort.
In advance, thank you for help approving this new article, moving it out of the "draft" space into the full Wikipedia space, adding the link to it within this article, and changing the shortcut pairwise counting which currently points to the sub-section here. VoteFair ( talk) 18:34, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
AngusWOOF: Above I've requested the split request you said was needed to add the new 'Pairwise Vote Counting' article. There has been no response. Is there something else I need to do? VoteFair ( talk) 04:53, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
There’s a proposal in the Condorcet method talk page which I don’t support but which I think contains a lot of sense. It says that
There is no such thing as "the Condorcet method"... There is no reason to discuss the methods [i.e. methods satisfying the Condorcet criterion] collectively in a separate article from the criterion...
In my view there is such a thing as the Condorcet method which is this:
This is certainly an incomplete method, but then the Copeland method is incomplete because of its proneness to ties, and in practice there’s always a remote possibility of ties in symmetric elections. Voting methods need to decide in advance what to do if they arise, but this is hardly ever specified.
Nonetheless people may feel loyalty to incomplete methods, particularly if they feel that failure to produce a clear winner is unlikely to happen, and that the decision of what to do in this case is a minor detail. They may investigate the mathematical properties of incomplete methods, as has certainly been done for the ‘Condorcet method’. [1]
So my proposal is that this article should be limited to the method as I have described it. Black’s and Copeland’s methods should be mentioned as refinements, just as the Dasgupta-Maskin method is a refinement of Copeland’s. There should be no discussion of Condorcet’s criterion or of methods whose only relevance lies in satisfying it. This would lead to a more focused article.
I think it causes confusion that Copeland’s method has an entry in the big comparison table and Condorcet’s doesn’t, because it implies a difference in status between them. Since there is a column for resolvability, and since failure to give a result is equivalent to giving an n-way tie, it seems to me that Condorcet’s method should have a row (perhaps the same as Black’s without resolvability). Presumably the Dasgupta-Maskin method could be given an entry which differs from Copeland’s only in resolvability. Colin.champion ( talk) 13:42, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
Well, I withdraw my suggestion, partly because of RobLo’s comments and other observations elsewhere, and partly because it flies in the face of history. Although Condorcet’s method is often presented as incomplete, he had his own way of completing it which boils down to a clumsy approach to the Kemeny-Young method. (I mean clumsy relative to modern understanding of estimation theory, which was in its infancy when Condorcet wrote.) If people don’t say much about it, it’s because no one likes it. But the name ‘Condorcet’s method’ cannot be appropriated to a method contradicting Condorcet’s own.
So I suggest that the best course is to trim this article, reducing it to the statement that the term ‘Condorcet method’ is applied to any method satisfying the Condorcet criterion, and summarising the different ways in which they extend the criterion. Colin.champion ( talk) 10:40, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
There was a short(-ish) description of what a Condorcet method is, which stated "Election method that elects the candidate who wins a majority of the vote in every head-to-head election against each of the other candidates". Sure, that's a little long (143 characters by my count), but the first few paragraphs of this article are also pretty long. The new description (as of 09:38, 12 April 2022 (UTC)) is "Preferential electoral system", which is way too short (since it doesn't distinguish it from instant-runoff voting, for example). I suspect it's going to need to be more than 40 characters long; User:X201, where is the specific guidance about number of characters that you're suggesting? -- RobLa ( talk) 09:38, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
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