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CondorcetCondorcetPosted Jun 10, 2012 3:17 UTC (Sun) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167)In reply to: Election Results for Fedora Board, FAmSCo, and FESCo seats by dmitrij.ledkov Parent article: Election Results for Fedora Board, FAmSCo, and FESCo seats
Condorcet selects a single candidate from a list. It would in principle work to select the US President, or a British MP but it can't be used in these seat-filling applications.
Notice also that Condorcet's criterion itself does _nothing_ when there's a draw, and draws are common for highly contested elections under Condorcet. You have to add a fix-up on top of Condorcet if you would like to elect somebody rather than tell the electorate "too bad, you did not make a clear choice between these candidates". When using these fix-ups the complete electoral system is no longer "fair" in the specific sense that Condorcet is fair.
Finally, though least problematic considering the electorate in this case, Condorcet is relatively difficult to explain and the fix-up is even harder. For democracy to be effective in its primary role (affording bloodless transitions of power) it must be transparent and a complex voting system is opaque to the average person. This is the unique advantage of FPTP, even young children with no arithmetic ability can understand who wins a FPTP election.
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Condorcet Posted Jun 10, 2012 17:00 UTC (Sun) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link]
> This is the unique advantage of FPTP, even young children with no arithmetic ability can understand who wins a FPTP election.
True, but it has the drawback that they do not understand how they should vote in a FPTP election to maximize their vote influence, due to strategic voting.
Condorcet Posted Jun 11, 2012 13:20 UTC (Mon) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
>True, but it has the drawback that they do not understand how they should vote in a FPTP election to maximize their vote influence, due to strategic voting
Right. The rules are simple, but the game is not. Since simply learning the rules is insufficient in order to be able to play, trading off a marginally more complex voting system in exchange for a simpler game is a win for everyone with no vested interest in voter ignorance.
Condorcet Posted Jun 11, 2012 17:30 UTC (Mon) by theophrastus (guest, #80847) [Link]
...or said another way:
a win for everyone with a vested interest in voters with special/superior knowledge (of the underlying voting methodology)
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