Condorcet elections, right for US?

[Al6200]

In the election system we have today, each voter chooses a single candidate, and whichever candidate is chosen most often wins. But what if there is a candidate that everyone likes, but doesn't pick as their #1.

In a Condorcet election, one would rank the candidates in order of preference, so for example Shaggy might write on his ballot:

1. Dennis Kucinich
2. Ron Paul
3. Barack Obama
4. John McCain

Where Kucinich is his first choice, Ron Paul is his second most preferred, and so on.

What's unique about this system is how the ballots are tallied. The winner is whichever person would win the most one on one contests between any of the two candidates. Confusing? Here's an example:

There are 3 voters: A, B, C, and D, and there are 4 candidates: Ron Paul, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, and Dennis Kucinich.

Voter A:

1. Mike Huckabee
2. Dennis Kucinich
3. Mitt Romney
3. John McCain

Voter B:

1. John McCain
2. Dennis Kucinich
3. Mike Huckabee
4. Mitt Romney

Voter C:

1. John McCain
2. Dennis Kucinich
3. Mike Huckabee
4. Mitt Romney

Voter D:

1. Mitt Romney
2. Dennis Kucinich
3. Mike Huckabee
4. John McCain

So now we look at each possible match up:

Mitt Romney vs. John McCain: Tied 2-2
Mitt Romney vs. Dennis Kucinich: Dennis Kucinich wins 3-1
Mitt Romney vs. Mike Huckabee: Mike Huckabee wins 3-1
Mike Huckabee vs. John McCain Tied 2-2
Mike Huckabee vs. Dennis Kucinich Dennis Kucinich wins 3-1
John McCain vs. Dennis Kucinich Tied 2-2

Dennis Kucinich wins because he is preferred or equal to all of the other candidates (of course, with millions of voters there would be not ties like we have here).

Through a popular-vote election like we have in place today, John McCain would win because he's more often chosen as the #1 choice then any other candidate. But Dennis Kucinich would win a Condorcet election because no one hates him, even though no one picks him as their first choice.

[BAWLS]

Caucuses are kind of like your condorcet elections. At the one I went to we stood in the area of the candidate of our choice. The John Edwards area didn't have enough people for him to be "viable," so they joined (all two of them) the Obama area.

Of course, in your condorcet elections if both the Clinton and Obama supporters had Edwards as their second choice, Edwards would have actually won, instead of being considered "inviable." So I guess caucuses really have nothing to do with this topic, lololol.

Caucuses are fucking stupid, anyway.

It appears that condorcet elections would be more democratic in that the winnerwould be more likely to be generally admired, or at least less likely to be generally hated. But it'd be a lot of work to look up the positions of all those primary candidates, and almost half the population is already to lazy to vote for just one candidate.

[The-evil-bucket]

Why not just use a simple majority? Why do we need a new election system?

[BAWLS]

At 6/22/08 04:45 PM, The-evil-bucket wrote: Why not just use a simple majority? Why do we need a new election system?

Because a simply majority only takes into account the opinions a simple majority of the population, whereas this system would possibly please more people.

[Al6200]

A Condorcet election would simply produce more moderate leaders who are generally liked by everyone. That's its advantage over a straight single-vote system.

[seventy-one]

What do you do when there's a Condorcet cycle? Then everyone's screwed...

At 6/22/08 04:45 PM, The-evil-bucket wrote: Why not just use a simple majority? Why do we need a new election system?

If you mean plurality, which is what we have, there are a host of problems with it. The first and foremost being vote splitting, and a lack of dependency from irrelevant alternatives.

Both the methods mentioned though, fall under Ken Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, meaning none of them are free from the paradoxes can occur in a ranked voting system.

But again, that only applies to ranked voting systems, scoring systems are free from the paradoxes in Arrow's theorem. If America wants a real change, we need to go to range voting or approval voting.

[n64kid]

I wouldn't mind another method. The one used for NCAA Football.

For those of you who don't know how it works, you vote by rank, which turns into points. First place votes are worth more than second, obviously, but it is possible for someone to win without getting a first place vote.

It probably works better in elections with 12+ parties as this prevents the most hated candidate from winning with 10% of the votes, but think of it like this; everyone who hates Nader puts him dead last while people who throw their vote away would still rank other candidates. I see many problems with it, but your thoughts?

[seventy-one]

At 6/22/08 10:22 PM, n64kid wrote: I wouldn't mind another method. The one used for NCAA Football.

That's called the Borda method.

I see many problems with it, but your thoughts?

I too see many problems with it (notwithstanding, its still a ranked voting method, which falls prey to the aforementioned impossibility theorem).

My main problem is that when people vote strategically in order to get their candidate the maximum chance of winning, it could turn out to burn everyone. As you mentioned it is possible that someone with zero first place votes could win, and in a three candidate election, if everyone votes strategically, that winner could someone whom everyone (but a small, small, minority) hates, as opposed to someone whom half like.

[n64kid]

At 6/22/08 10:29 PM, seventy-one wrote: That's called the Borda method.

Thank you, I was googling burda voting and coming up with nothing.
Smart lad.

[The-evil-bucket]

At 6/22/08 06:22 PM, BAWLS wrote:

At 6/22/08 04:45 PM, The-evil-bucket wrote: Why not just use a simple majority? Why do we need a new election system?

Because a simply majority only takes into account the opinions a simple majority of the population, whereas this system would possibly please more people.

But it's not the right thing to do. If a Republican, a Democrat, and some shady third party candidate was running, and 40% of the people put the Republican as their first choice, 40% put the Democrat, since they know the views of both candidates, with the shady third party getting 20% first choice. But since these two have been heavily scrutinized and people know what they stand for, which are radically different, people have opinions on them. The third party candidate, which no one knows about, and might be a disastrous leader with ties to every lobbiest in the country, gets 70% of the second choice votes.

And we get a corrupt, crazy, greedy president. Now how many people does that make happy?

[JT1]

I think this would complicate elections enormously. It has the potential to cause many problems, which would reduce the credibility of elections. The last thing the United States need is a reduction in public faith in election.

[arxarts]

it would enable fraud to happen easier.

what the US really needs is majority, period, no electoral votes or that crap. like in 2000, the US voted Al Gore, but just because some democrats were living in Minnesota and not in Florida, Bush came to power and over 4000 soldiers lost their lives.

[alchemylord]

At 6/25/08 03:13 PM, arxarts wrote: it would enable fraud to happen easier.

what the US really needs is majority, period, no electoral votes or that crap. like in 2000, the US voted Al Gore, but just because some democrats were living in Minnesota and not in Florida, Bush came to power and over 4000 soldiers lost their lives.

Actually the electoral college was set up to prevent fraud. Although you are right Al Gore got kicked in the balls by the 2000 election.

[qu3muchach0]

you guys make me laugh... your vote doesn't matter anyways, and if you think it does, you've been to too many peta and green peace rallies. the american government fixes votes in other countries, what makes you think that they don't do the same thing here?