Weird idea about Borda/SQNV and Condorcet to potentially mitigate Burial
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By a Borda system, I mean a positional score system, possibly with equal rankings, but where candidates with equal rankings will be given the mean of the scores assigned to each rank.
Consider this weird idea:
(0) Let X be the set of viable candidates.
(1) Among the candidates in X, identify the positional score (or SQNV) winner and the Condorcet winner. If they are the same, or if no Condorcet winner exists, elect the positional score winner.
(2) Otherwise, remove the Condorcet winner from X, and on each ballot, increase the rank of each candidate scored below the Condorcet winner by 1. Repeat from step (1) until a winner is identified.
I haven’t investigated how this would work, but the idea intrigues me. My thinking is that it greatly increases the risk that a turkey-raised candidates (under which a true preferred candidate is buried) will win if they exist, which discourages burial, but without resorting to a strict Condorcet method.
In this method, the Condorcet winner is challenged to achieve high ranking positions in addition to having marginal victories over all other candidates, otherwise it will lose out to another candidate.
I have a very simple example where burial of a second-favorite front runner causes a (least favorite) turkey to win, I’ll post it here soon. But actually, the mismatch of the Condorcet winner and the SQNV winner didn’t occur, so SQNV itself made the burial risky.