Condorcet Internet Voting Service

Rank in order of preference as many or as few of the voting systems as you choose to.

Definitions:

Approval:

Voters can mark (“approve”) as many candidates as they choose to. The candidate getting the most approvals wins.

By approving the candidates you accept or like, you maximize the probability of electing someone you accept or like.

Or likewise for whatever set you choose.

Approving candidates whose election wouldn’t disappoint you approves above-expectation candidates, thereby raising your expectation.

A voter who approves an unfavorite compromise-candidate of course also can & will approve those s/he likes more. If s/he has compromised unnecessarily too far, then likely many of the the supporters of that more preferred candidate won’t share hir compromise, & the more preferred candidate wins.

The 2 Condorcet methods:

A complete pairwise-count determines, for each pair of candidates, which one is ranked over the other by more voters.

Usually 1 candidate pairbeats all others. Called the Condorcet-winner. S/he is elected. The 2 methods differ in what they do when there’s no Condorcet winner.

Both methods measure the strength of a pairwise defeat by the number of voters who rank defeater over defeated.

MinMax(wv):

Elect the candidate whose greatest defeat is the least.

Ranked-Pairs(wv):

One at a time, list the defeats, stronger ones first.

But whenever the next strongest defeat cycles with already-listed defeats, then skip that one.

When all defeats have been either listed or skipped, elect the candidate who isn’t defeated in any listed defeat.

Respective advantages:

Approval:

The absolutely minimal voting system to allow & count free expression of merit & acceptance among all candidates.

…thereby the unique unarbitrary voting system.

Easiest description, explanation, enactment, implementation (can be zero-cost), administration, & security-auditing against error & count-fraud.

The 2 wv Condorcet methods:

An “automatic-machine” that takes all pairwise-preferences as input, & outputs the candidate who pairbeats everyone else. That automatically gives the best outcome each voter could get. No one has any need or incentive to not rank sincerely.

But that comes at the cost of an extremely computationally intensive count, thereby losing all of Approval’s abovestated advantages. …the cost of having the method do everything for us.

For proposal to those who insist on rank-balloting.

Relative advantages of the two versions:

MinMax version:

Briefer definition than Ranked-Pairs.

Ranked-Pairs:

Meets more criteria than MinMax. That isn’t necessarily important, but it brings much prestige among Condorcet methods. Highly regarded among Condorcetists.

…likely enhancing its enactability.