Difference between revisions of "Condorcet Voting"

Latest revision as of 20:42, 24 June 2011

A Condorcet Voting system elects the Condorcet Winner of an election if one exists, and approximates one if not. The Condorcet Winner is the single candidate who would defeat any other candidate one-on-one. Taijitu has adopted Condorcet Voting in the past, but later abandoned it in favor of Instant Runoff Voting.

Theory

In a plurality election, one in theory simply votes for one's favorite candidate and the candidate with the most votes wins. However, because supporters of candidates who are believed to "have no chance" can still prefer one of the "mainstream" candidates to the other, they end up voting for someone who is not their favorite at all, based on who they guess "has a chance".

In a Condorcet election, one can simply write down candidates in the order of preference.

How to Vote

Voting in a Condorcet election is a tiny bit more complicated than voting in a plurality vote election, but exactly the same as in any other preferential system such as Instant Runoff Voting. On a Condorcet ballot, voters rank the candidates in order of preference. They need not rank all candidates, and may rank some candidates equally.

For example, Green voters in Florida in 2000 might vote:

1. Nader
2. Gore

or

1. Nader
2. Gore
3. Bush

While Buchanan voters might vote:

1. Buchanan
2. Bush
3. Gore
4. Nader

How to Count

Counting

Finding a Condorcet winner

Resolving a winner cycle

History

Originally Taijitu's election method was specified to be Plurality voting. The very first amendment to the first Constitution of Taijitu was the institution of Condorcet Voting. By fiat, it was decided that the Condorcet method to use would be Schulze, where cycles are resolved by looking at the size of victory margins and dropping the weakest margins from consideration.

There were several Delegate and Speaker elections under Condorcet voting, until there was a disputed election in which there was disagreement over how to count the result. As a result, it became apparent that most voters did not actually understand the system of Condorcet voting Taijitu was using.

Following that, Instant Runoff voting and Plurality voting were both proposed, and neither passed. Then a coup d'etat changed constitutions and the new constitution used Instant Runoff voting. This was kept when the rest of the coup constitution was replaced with the original constitution.

Condorcet Voting for Delegate was re-proposed in the Third Party Congress of the Progressive Party by Eluvatar.