[Way OT] Condorcet vs. IRV

[Eric]

Joe Mason <joe at notcharles.ca> wrote:

> One interesting approach was brought up on the elections list just
> before I stopped reading it.  (Wait, don't I recognize your name from
> there?  You'd be more familiar with it than I, but I'll bring it up
> anyway, on the assumption that there are other interested readers out
> there.)
> 
> Add an implicit "none" candidate to separate rankings of actual
> preferences from least of the evils.  Your first case becomes "A > C >
> none > B", and the second (probably) "A > none > C > B".  So in the
> latter case, the voter is saying that they prefer C to B, but only if
> forced to choose between them due to overwhelming preference by the rest
> of the electorate.
> 
> I'd be grateful if you can point me to a thorough analysis of this idea,
> since it sounds reasonable to me but I don't really have the background
> to evaluate it.

You can find the full archives at:

  http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/

I used the grep expression: 

  >[\s]*none[\s]*> 

to find various messages related to it.

It does seem to be an interesting idea and one that I was unfamiliar
with...I have not investigated it fully.

Off the top of my head, the only inherent problem with it that I see is
that what happens if 'NONE' turns out to be the Condorcet Winner? 

An election is about finding a winner, providing for a result where this
would not occur seems problematic unless one is using a Condorcet method
where a strict (but not necessarily unique) ordering of the candidates
can be found, in which case one can just select the #2 person.

One such method that I am aware of is MAM
(http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~seppley/).