The assumption that the mathematical analysis of voting systems has nothing to do with actual voting systems is mistaken; there seems to be a level of cognitive resolution below which inferior systems (such as IRV) will appear "good" because the mathematical evidence is incomprehensible. They also mistakenly assert that IRV eliminates the spoiler problem.
Warren D. Smith has proposed (on the approval voting list) range voting (RV), which is the continuous analog of approval voting (or cardinal voting); a voter can vote any number in the unit interval for each candidate. A common criticism of approval voting, which occurs in the LWV article--that approvals all have the same intensity (equal to one)--is eliminated in range voting. However, it is more involved to implement than approval voting. Smith shows that IRV will lead to a 2-party duopoly over time (his is expected), whereas RV will not. Smith defines a decision theoretic notion called Bayesian regret and has computer simulations which show that range voting minimizes the average Bayesian regret over all systems compared (including plurality, IRV, approval voting...). One would like to see statements and proofs of the RV-analogues of theorems about approval voting that have appeared in the literature, though certain nice properties are immediate (monotonicity, summability). -FL On Mon, 11 Oct 2004 06:57:09 -0400, James Green-Armytage <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > >they don't explicitly write that they recommend IRV, but > >the study is written in such a manner that a naive reader > >will necessarily get to the conclusion that IRV was the > >best method. > > I agree with Markus's assertion that the LWV analysis is poorly done, and > poorly done in a way which usually favors IRV. I agree with many of > Markus's criticisms, especially their slipshod analysis of vulnerability > to strategy. Just in case anyone is interested, they do say one nice thing > about Condorcet, that is: > > "even champions of other systems acknowledge that such a Condorcet winner > is more truly representative of the will of the majority and > therefore more 'democratic.' " > > But on the whole, yes, they tread too softly on IRV. One other thing I > noticed is that their research is a bit erratic. They cite several, > several pages on the fairvote site, and quite a few pages on Mike > Ossipoff's site, but they didn't seem to read any of the other sites which > talk about Condorcet's method... and there are quite a few good ones. > By the way, I also think that they take the Borda count too seriously... > > James > > > > ---- > Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info > ---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
