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At 8/26/04 10:43 PM, red_skunk wrote: A hypothetical election between three candidates.
The people who are voting, are asked to rank the three candidates, from their most favorite, to their least.
The results are as follows:
(Candidates 'A', 'B', & 'C')

# of votes > ... | ... 6 ... | ... 5 ... | ... 4 ... |
rank \/ ............. | .......... | ........... | .......... |
Most. Fav. ...... | ... A ... | ... B ... | ... C ... |
Mid. Choice ... | ... C ... | ... C ... | ... B ... |
Least Fav. ..... | ... B ... | ... A ... | ... A ... |

Now, my question is - Who should win the election?

Using the Condorcet method you get the following Matrix:

...|A|....|B|....|C|...
|A|...|....|6|....|6|...
|B|9|....|...|....|5|...
|C|9|...|10|...|...|...

this basically means that A beats B 6 times, A beats C 6 times, B beats A 9 times, B beats C 5 times, C beats A 9 times and C beats B 10 times.

Because C beats A more than A beats C and C beats B more than B beats C, C is the condorcet winner.

Also, the Borda method is unusable as it is the most succeptable of all voting methods that I know of to strategic voting.

Strategic voting is when someone who likes Nader votes for Gore because he wants his vote to count more.

Suppose there are 10 candidates for a borda election. A through J

Suppose A and B are the only real contenders, each getting around 50% of the first place votes. Suppose C is similar to A and D is similar to B. The other parties aren't very reasonable at all and appeal to few.

Suppose 100 people vote honestly in this manner, ACBDEFGHIJ
Suppose 50 people vote dishonestly in this manner, BDCEFGHIJA

The first set gives 900 points to A and 700 points to B
The second set gives 450 points to B and 0 points to A

Add these up and you find that because 50 people voted strategically instead of honestly, they were able to skew the election.

Well. It depends entirely on whether the people are willing to go with their second choice to beat their last choice.

Let me put it this way. Many People like nader, and are okay with Kerry, and hate bush. But they hate Bush so much that they'll vote Kerry to beat him.

This phonomemon means that it is impossible to make a quick answer to your question. Polls would say "A" in a three person race, if the voters lack the discipline to switch their votes. If they have the discipline, the answer is C. Of course, people rarely simply follow their desires, cause they are complex creatures who do things for weird reasons.

At 8/29/04 07:57 PM, NotYouZ wrote: Obviously C. No one would be angered by it.

I agree. C seems the best candidate choice. It pleases the most people.

Slizor: I don't want to enact my beliefs through the electoral process since I believe that to be immoral. All I want, at the end of the day, is for people to leave me alone. I don't want to make them believe what I want to believe. I don't want my ideas (and their practical consequences) forced upon them. If they come around to my way of thinking, well good for them. If they don't, well also good for them. They have their own lives to lead and they have to come to any positions they ultimately take of their own free will, not just because I believe I should "force" them (because that's what voting is, it's force, it just appears more civilised) to become "free". What a contradiction that would be.

Shorbe, I believe anarchist libertarianism to be unreasonable. Taxation is necessary. Government's role is to protect the rights of people. Individuals can violate one's rights as much as the government can. Without taxation, the government will not have the revenue necessary to prevent the abuses of certain individuals. Taxation is necessary to protect your rights. You distrust of the government can blind you to the potential abuses of unjust individuals.

Umm... this was meant for another thread, but yeah...

Jlop985: Well, of course it can. Nothing is certain in life, and I'm not claiming that there would necessarily be any situation were people were perfectly safe. However, in the US, that's one part of where the 2nd Ammendment comes in. Also, under a rational and ethical society, the majority of people would make it socially undesirable to go around preying on each other. Aside from perhaps retaliating against anyone who caused trouble, people would cut that person off economically pretty quickly. Force might not even be necessary.

I reject your claim that we need government to protect us, and that it must steal from us (tax us) to do so. Freedom is inherent to man, as is the right to protect himself. He doesn't need anyone else to take care of either of those things. This is where I think so many people have it wrong-- they expect the nanny state to hold their hand with so many things. There comes a point where the cure is worse than the disease.

Hey, if you want to talk about libertarianism, you really ought to discuss it in another thread. I don't think that redskunk makes a habit of hijacking your threads so you ought to give him the respect of staying on topic in his thread.

Dr_Arbitrary: I'm not tryint to hijack anyone's thread, and it's not like anyone "owns" any thread. If people want to debate something else, they can debate something else and simply choose to ignore whatever side debate I am having. Besides which, even if I had "my own" thread, I wouldn't care what people wanted to discuss. It would be none of my business and it would be their freedom of speech.

shorbe: Why do you fail to recognise that humans are social animals? Humans need other humans to survive - you will no doubt need to use a hospital at one time or another, or a dentist, or even a supermarket. These things only exist because of human co-operation - these things only exist because society exists. Society is not an opt-out scheme (unless you cut off all contact with humans.) Your way of life would fail if it was followed throughout the world, all great things have come through collective human action.

Here's a little interesting scenario for you. It might be improbable for a national election, for sure, but lets say the stars align and give the following results:

30.25% ABC
30% CAB
29.75% BCA
3.25% CBA
3% BAC
2.75% ACB

Who should win?

At 9/3/04 10:38 AM, IllustriousPotentate wrote: Here's a little interesting scenario for you. It might be improbable for a national election, for sure, but lets say the stars align and give the following results:

30.25% ABC
30% CAB
29.75% BCA
3.25% CBA
3% BAC
2.75% ACB

Who should win?

Jerk, you just HAD to post a cyclic ambiguity, didn't you. There are methods for dealing with these sorts of problems, I don't know enough about them to really go over them in detail though.
On one hand it seems like a weakness in the Condorcdet method, but It's really not much worse than saying that sometimes plurality elections result in ties if 50%vote one way and 50% the other.

I'll do a little research on the methods for resolving these ambiguities and get back to you.

At 9/3/04 01:46 PM, Dr_Arbitrary wrote: Jerk,

Hehehe. :) Here's what I wanted to point out--not so much the problems with a three way tie, because there exists easily obtainable tie-breakers. Here's what I'm pointing out--regardless of whoever is chosen the winner in this situation, a majority prefered another candidate.

30.25% ABC
30% CAB
29.75% BCA
3.25% CBA
3% BAC
2.75% ACB

Let's declare the winner A. However, if you tally up the votes, 63% of the voters prefered candidate C to candidate A, a clear majority. Summarily, the majority that supported C over A loses to candidate A.
So lets say candidate C wins. What happens with that? 63% of the voters prefered candidate B to candidate C! Again, the majority (the people that prefer candidate B) lose out to C!
So declare B the winner. Now 63% of the voters prefer A to B!

There are a great deal of people that cite Bush's presidency as illegitimate because more people voted for (prefered) Gore instead. When you apply that same definition of illegitimacy to the above election, none of the candidates are legitimate! No matter who is chosen in the above example, a substantial majority will have preferred another specific candidate.

I think C should win

At 9/3/04 11:52 PM, DragonX587 wrote: I think C should win

In which scenario? The original at the head of the topic, or the scenario which I just posted?