Alex writes, "Once you support ranking, unless you've heard of Condorcet the runoff idea makes intuitive sense, since plenty of places in the US use 2-stage runoff..".
All sorts of unnecessary complications can make 'intuitive sense'. All one needs is a mental commitment to be (gratuitously) complex and arcane. That's what IRV is all about. There's no answering people, however allegedly 'intelligent', who are committed to gratuitous complexity and are unwilling to ponder counterarguments. Just remember that (for those of us with simpler intuitions) NOTHING actually requires runoff. The French could have quit at the primary stage. Runoff - as right now in France - is just a attempt to manufacture a 'majority' when in fact none need exist. Far better than IRV, if you really want a true majority, or something close to it, the Approval winner is as close as you will get. If you want, insist (a la Demorep) that the Approval winner actually command at least 50%, else choice devolves to a legislature. Or, even better, first hold a 'runoff' which is just a re-run, in order to give the electorate a second chance to get a 50% Approval Winner. Actually, if you insist on being able to use three or more ranks, being able to independently grade the different candidates makes even MORE sense: it's more flexible and expressive. In other words, you get Cardinal Ratings (CR). [To be sure, with instrumental-only strategy, CR amounts to Approval. In favor of CR, I have argued that people have reasons of expressivity to use CR to vote intermediate grades. Moreover - if a public is ready to put up with the clerical problems just of ranking - it would be little or no extra trouble, and fewer invalidated ballots, to allow X-slot grading. Here, integer X could be as large as 11, for the case of ratings ranging from 0 through 10. But the best combination of CR-type expressivity and Approval simplicity would be X-slot Approval.] The basic argument that IRVites are making to the small part of the public that is listening at all amounts to the Big Lie: 'IRV is the only available alternative to the status quo.' I go with Mike's proposed rejoinder, and I continue to suggest the following message to those who want to join IRV campaigns: Campaigning for IRV when Approval is available is like campaigning for replacing tally marks by Roman numerals, when Hindu-Arabic decimals are available. Joe Weinstein Long Beach CA USA _________________________________________________________________ Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com ---- For more information about this list (subscribe, unsubscribe, FAQ, etc), please see http://www.eskimo.com/~robla/em
