Sorry, I made an incorrect statement in a recent posting here: I said that Runoff differs from IRO in not being able to fail to elect a Condorcet winner that is everyone's exclusive 1st or 2nd choice. No, Runoff can do that too, as can IRO. Though IRO is the only rank-balloting method to be able to fail in that way, it isn't the only method (of any kind) that can do it. But my other statements regarding Runoff vs IRO are accurate. By the way, when I pointed out that IRO, unlike Runoff, can fail to elect a CW who has a plurality, someone could say: "Sure, but FPP (the Plurality method) won't do that either-- does that mean that _it's_ better? In that respect, sure, but the methods that I advocate are significantly better than Plurality in ways that many consider important, ways that have been much discussed on these lists. But I'd like to add that in Approval, if the CW has a plurality, and more extreme voters don't vote for him, he still has a plurality, and wins unless another candidate has his vote total increased by other voters sharing. If the CW is a non-centrist who's CW, then his votes, & those farther out, must add up to a majority. Sure, if they all voted for a more centrist compromise that they believed they needed, that could give the election away. But I've talked about how such a giveaway would require a very big mis-estimate, believing that the opposite side has a plurality, when actually their own candidate has a majority. Especially implausible if, in keeping with normally distributed voters, the middle candidate isn't especially small. And, in the pairwise count methods that solve circular ties by counting votes-against in pairwise comparisons, the only thing that can take victory away from a CW is the devious & risky offensive strategy of order-reversal. Mike Ossipoff
