I read the letter. Probably the key point to mention is monotonicity (in non-technical terms), which is similar to participation (your sincere ballot may provide a worse outcome than that obtained if you either vote insincerely or don't vote at all). Simple example would be to say "Imagine that we use IRV, and the Green makes it to the final round against the Republican. It could very well be that the Green stands no chance against the Republican, but the Democrat would have beaten him in the final round. We should have a system that allows people to hedge their bets. Approval voting is one such system....."
Also, many people in the Bay Area have probably never heard of any alternative voting system other than IRV. Many of them probably think well of it because (a) IRV's flaws aren't immediately obvious, (b) plurality's flaws are glaring, and IRV fixes one of the most glaring flaws (the effect of "minor" spoilers with less than 25% support in a 3-way race), and (c) most people intuitively realize that a better voting system would give more expressivity than plurality, and IRV certainly offers more expressivity. So, I would suggest opening the letter with a remark sympathetic to IRV supporters, something like "The letter writer was indeed correct, in that races with more than 2 candidates require a better election method. IRV certainly eliminates the 'spoiler effect' when the third candidate has only weak support. Sadly, even IRV can fail once the third candidate becomes stronger. Consider...." and then launch into an example like the one above. Anyway, just my $0.02. Alex ---- For more information about this list (subscribe, unsubscribe, FAQ, etc), please see http://www.eskimo.com/~robla/em
