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Recent Posts
- A Notion of Motion 2017-05-19
- The Way Forward 2017-03-01
- 2015 Electoral-Reform Commitment 2017-02-28
Blog Archives
What voting system should we use?
The answer here is: it depends on the kind of decision we’re making. FPTP works well for binary decisions: Yea vs Nay, or one vs another. Do we adopt the motion, or not? Do we adjourn, or not? Do we … Continue reading
Who uses Condorcet methods now?
No parliament or legislature, or local government currently uses any Condorcet method to elect its members, but: “… a Condorcet method known as Nanson’s method was used in city elections in the U.S. town of Marquette, Michigan in the 1920s” … Continue reading
Are the voters sophisticated enough for this method?
Are voters sophisticated enough for this? It doesn’t matter. Such complexity as exists is primarily in the tally, and, to some extent, in the evaluation of the result. But, while we need to document and explain these for those who … Continue reading
Can I still vote for only one Candidate?
Can you vote for only one candidate? Certainly, if you want. This means you fail to rank the other candidates relative to each other, simply saying that you like that one choice more than everyone else, and dislike all the … Continue reading
Confusing if lowest first-preference wins, or largest doesn’t?
Firstly, the given tally procedure does not record nor report votes in terms of aggregate first-, or second-preferences, etc., and cannot be reverse-engineered to discover this. This is by design, and I would recommend against modifying the tally procedures to … Continue reading
Campaigning for your next-preference support?
Another significant consequence of preferential voting (Condorcet methods, particularly, IRV less so) is that second- and subsequent-preferences are important. This fundamentally changes the game. Parties and candidates will of course continue to court voters for their first-preference votes, but if … Continue reading
What about strategic voting?
We’re all familiar with strategic voting in our FPTP system; it goes like this: We’ve got candidates , , and ; “We” really don’t want to win, and we foresee that while each of and will get significant portions of … Continue reading
Is Ranked-Pairs the best Condorcet system?
Is Ranked-Pairs really the best Condorcet System? If there is a Condorcet winner in respect of any given election, every Condorcet method will determine this same winner. They’re all as good as each other, at this point. The different methods … Continue reading
Is a Condorcet Winner really most-preferred by the majority?
This is another “How high is up?” question. Let’s start by seeing if we can agree that a first-past-the-post election that has a majority winner does, in fact, reflect the voters’ true majority preference? I think that we could then … Continue reading
