As per Anthony's advice, I expanded the pro-AV essay to 800 words, more appropriate for an op-ed. I tried to trim it to serve as a letter, but I couldn't decide what to trim. I flesh out a few points, and also critique IRV.
If anybody comes up with the contact info of newspapers in areas with IRV ballot initiatives (e.g. Alaska) send me the contact info and I'll submit it. For that matter, send it to the whole list, since I'm sure plenty of people here have some good material on their hard drives. Here it is: REAL VOTING REFORM By Alex Small Every election cycle many Americans lament the lack of a strong third party. Some say that the two parties are corrupt. Others don�t fit in with either party, perhaps being conservative on economic issues and liberal on social issues. Whatever their reasons, many Americans want more options. Unfortunately, even if there is a third candidate whom you feel is superior to both the Democrat and the Republican, the best bet is usually to pick the lesser evil between the two contenders. Victories like Jesse Ventura�s, where people boldly vote for their true first preference, are rare and will remain rare so long as we only have one vote to cast. Fortunately, elections don�t have to be run that way. There�s an easy way to determine the true, honest favorite of the voters: Approval Voting, where you simply indicate yes or no for each candidate. The candidate with the strongest approval from the electorate wins. We could do it without new voting machines. And, since voting laws are handled by the states, grassroots efforts could bring this about without conducting a massive nationwide campaign. Who will benefit from Approval Voting? 1) We the People: We�ll have the freedom to vote our conscience and still hedge our bets against our least favorite�have our cake and eat it too! We�ll also see competitive third and fourth options, and benefit from a greater range of choices. Those of us who don't really like either of the two major parties will finally have serious alternatives to support. As far as strategy under Approval Voting, if our main concern is defeating a particular candidate we can say yes to all of his major competitors. If our main concern is only electing a particular candidate we�ll be free to approve him and no other. We�ll also be free to take an intermediate course of action. 2) The Democrats and Republicans: Surprised? Right now, candidates often win primary elections with less than 25% of the vote. With Approval Voting, whoever has the broadest support within the party will win. The parties will go into the general elections united behind strong candidates. They also won�t have to worry about candidates who could never possibly win acting as �spoilers� in close general elections (e.g. Ralph Nader). 3) Third Parties: Third parties will go into the election without worrying about the �wasted vote syndrome.� They will win or lose based on whether or not the people agree with their proposals. A third party candidate will be able to say his piece, and face questions of policy, not questions like �Why should I waste my vote on you?� In short, everybody will benefit. This is no surprise, because people benefit when they have more freedom to make choices. Interestingly, the Russians embraced a slight variation on Approval Voting when Communism collapsed. Isn�t it ironic that in the voting booth American voters have less freedom of choice than their Russian counterparts? Of course, Approval Voting isn�t the only proposal out there for bringing more choice into our elections. A popular alternative, embraced by many third parties, is Instant Runoff Voting (IRV). With IRV, each voter declares his or her first, second, third, etc. choices. If no candidate has a majority of first choice votes the candidate with the fewest first choice votes is eliminated, and his supporters� votes are transferred to their second choices. This continues until somebody has a majority. This method sounds good, but it has unexpected problems. First, in many states there are seven or more parties on the ballot. That requires us to keep track of 7*6*5*4*3*2 = 5040 different orders of preference for each race. Florida serves as a cautionary tale: keep your ballots and your counting as simple as possible, or chaos may ensue. Also, runoffs created unexpected �spoiler problems.� Suppose that in 1992 Clinton could have beaten Perot head-to-head and Bush could have beaten Clinton, and that Perot�s supporters, being fiscal conservatives, would take Bush over Clinton. If we had used this method, and Bush had been eliminated first, Clinton would have won. The Perot supporters actually would have been better off if some of them had defected to Bush. Even more perverse, Clinton supporters would have had an incentive to defect to the Perot camp, to make sure that the runoff was Clinton vs. Perot, where Clinton would win. Approval Voting faces none of these perverse problems. The counting is simple. There are no strategic questions beyond asking what your priorities are and whom you�ll support. The choice for real voting reform is clear: Approval Voting.
