Comments on: Jeremy Wood- must we really resort to these tactics?

By: Mike Thicke

Mike Thicke — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 05:43:20 +0000

I think people are misinterpreting this. From my reading, this is not at all a selfish move, but rather he’s telling his supporters that if he doesn’t win it’d be really bad if another candidate did. He’s disendorsing Johannes. This is pretty consistent with what he said when he temporarily withdrew from the race.

By: Bowinn

Bowinn — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 19:19:10 +0000

I'm glad this was addressed here. I received his mass message and had the following brief conversation with him:

Me: Doesn't it kind of defeat the purpose of condorcet voting if you tell people not to use it properly?

Jeremy: I was only sending that message out for any group members committed to my winning who don't fully understand the strategic element of condorcet voting.
I hope I wasnt offensive to your voting autonomy.

Me: I'm not personally offended, I'm just concerned about a potential executive trying to undermine a system that was brought into place to help choose the best possible candidate. If Johannes is the second choice, that is how they should list him, lest an even less desirable candidate than either of you win the election.

In his defense, I think it should be noted that this is politics, and this is what politicans do. He has broken no rules and was perfectly within his rights to tell people to do this for him, but I imagine it would be a bit disappointing for those peope who worked so hard to get the Condorcet method into the elections based on the concept that it will the most preferred candidate and reduce the necessity of strategic voting.

By: radicalbeer

radicalbeer — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 11:52:32 +0000

So does this mean Jeremy is conceding defeat yet again? It doesn’t matter where other candidates are if you’re already the Condorcet winner.

By: Willem

Willem — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 08:13:22 +0000

Part of the point of Condorcet is that strategic voting is basically impossible!