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Isn't the Schulze method superior to single transferable vote? It takes preferences, and it's Condorcet (i.e., if everyone prefers A to B for all B in hypothetical two person elections, then A wins.) STV is not Condorcet.

I can understand national elections using STV since the Schulze method would be impossible to explain to an average electorate, but math.stackexchange is made of mathematicians. Why do we use STV?

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Within STV you have to specify the variant. We use "Meek".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meek%27s_method#Meek.27s_method

If you are electing multiple people and simplicity is not important, then we recommend Meek STV. Most people agree that Meek STV is the best variant of STV, but it can only be implemented with a computer program.

http://www.openstv.org/faq

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    $\begingroup$ While I generally have no problem with Meek STV (actually, I really haven't thought enough about the various voting systems and the nature of various SE sites to have a proper preference), producing a sorted list of preference of all candidates (which Schulze does, and perhaps other methods do) would be a good thing if you're going to, as a policy, appoint people finishing below the number of votes given (as in appointing the 4th-place finisher from the 2010 election when we'd only cast top-3 votes). $\endgroup$
    – Isaac
    Jun 17, 2011 at 14:22
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    $\begingroup$ Thanks for the details. It seems that you are using "CPO-STV", which is Condorcet. So, I withdraw my objection. $\endgroup$
    – Neil G
    Jun 17, 2011 at 18:19
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Why is Condorcet better? What if I prefer the independence of irrelevant alternatives as a property a voting method should require? (Okay, I don't really... but I do quite like later-no-harm.)

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    $\begingroup$ Yes, but STV doesn't have IIA either, although the Schulze method has the independence of Smith-dominated alternatives, which isn't a bad approximation. Good point about later-no-harm. $\endgroup$
    – Neil G
    Jun 17, 2011 at 16:14

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