hi everyone, I'm a activist in Washington state who is interested in eliminating the plurality system here. We have a state-wide inititiative trying to get on the ballot in 2005 (http://www.irvwa.org/). It proposes using IRV. In addition, it would eliminate the general primaries in Washington, and just use IRV in November for all the candidates across the parties.
I've been doing petitioning for I-318, but I've also been reading a variety of information on the web, and have found the arguments against IRV compelling. However, most of the objections are technical in nature. I am convinced of the technical superiority of Condorcet over other methods. However, the lack of any real world implementations to point to, and the difficulty of explaining the tie-breaker make it very difficult to explain to voters. And voter education is sort of what this petitioning thing is all about. It's difficult to keep their attention for 30 seconds. So I'm down to looking at IRV vs. Approval (Approval being completely trivial to explain). The Center for Voting and Democracy (a group I generally agree with) has stated its preference for IRV over Approval. There are two relevant links: http://www.fairvote.org/irv/approval.htm Article in Science magazine: http://www.fairvote.org/op_eds/science2001.htm The most compelling argument against IRV in my mind is the empirical evidence from Australia. 3rd party candidates are still not viable, and voters still vote tactically. The requirement to rank all the candidates also results in some odd side effects (like 'how to vote' cards, and the horrific 'donkey vote'). The most compelling argument against Approval voting from the Science mag article is the idea that it will result in non-substantive campaigns where candidates try to come across as totally inoffensive in order to gain approval from as many voters as possible. I realize this list is largely technical in nature (judging from the archives that I've read). But would anyone care to comment on these issues (sort of non-technical) issues? It strikes me that this reform will involve a lot of discussions with citizens about what "fairness" means in a single-winner election. I guess this is why everyone seems jazzed about Condorcet. btw, here's the results of a mock vote that I put up. I think it's interesting that IRV still gets Kerry elected, but Condorcet elects David Cobb (ok, so all my friends are total leftists..) http://www.bitmechanic.com/vote/results.php thanks! -- James ---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
