On removing the Condorcet influence from pairwise elections data

Recent developments in voting theory show that Condorcet profiles embedded in electorates are responsible for conflicts between pairwise voting methods and for reversals of rankings under positional methods whenever candidates are dropped or added. Because of the strong symmetry of the rankings of the candidates within these profiles, it can be argued that Condorcet profiles represent complete ties between the candidates so far as election outcomes are concerned. Hence removing their influence from pairwise tallies should not matter ∗The authors gratefully acknowledge comments from Donald G. Saari, George A. Hazelrigg and an anonymous referee on an earlier version of the work. All remaining errors are ours. Some of the results presented here are extensions of work supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation under Grant No. CMMI-0640826 and CMMI0900093. Chandra gratefully acknowledges this support. Any opinions, conclusions or recommendations expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect views of the sponsoring agencies. and moreover is justified because of the distortions they induce. The paper discusses a method of removing or reducing the influence of Condorcet profiles from pairwise elections data. JEL Numbers: D70, D71, D72