should win if a majority of voters answers affirmatively to the question 'Do you prefer X to every other candidate?'. The Condorcet criterion is stronger. According to it, a candidate X should win if for every other candidate Y there is a plurality of voters that answers affirmatively to the question 'Do you prefer X to Y?'. Satisfaction of the Condorcet criterion implies that of the majority criterion, but not vice versa. With the Condorcet criterion the individuals comprising the majorities of voters answering affirmatively may vary according to Y, but the majority criterion requires a single majority which has X as their first choice, preferred to every other candidate. In the statement that Condorcet criterion is stronger than the majority criterion, the word criterion must be understood as a criterion that a voting system may or may not satisfy, not as a criterion that a candidate must satisfy in order to win the election. Application of the majority criterion: controversy The majority criterion applies to situations where a single candidate is preferred above all others by a majority of voters. In an election with three or more serious contenders, there is often no candidate ranked first by such a majority. Therefore, in elections with more than two major parties, the majority criterion is frequently irrelevant. The majority criterion was initially defined with respect to voting systems based only on preference order. Even in situations where the majority criterion does come into play, it is ambiguous how to apply it to systems with absolute rating categories such as approval, score, and majority judgment. For approval voting, the difficulty is that the criterion refers to an exclusive preference, and it is unstated whether this preference is actually indicated on the ballot or not. The common simple statement of the criterion, as given in the introduction to this article, does not resolve this, for the word "prefer" can refer to a mental state or to an action; a complete statement of the criterion would either refer to actual marks on the ballot showing the required preference, or it could refer to the mental state of the voters. For majority judgment, the difficulty is different. There are presumed to be enough rating categories to express any salient mental preference. If the word "prefer" is interpreted in a relative sense, as rating the preferred candidate above any other candidate, the method does not pass,