Dear Michael Stephan, in my opinion, the best single-winner method in use today at the national level is IRV. IRV meets the majority criterion for solid coalitions. IRV meets independence from clones. And IRV has a higher Condorcet efficiency than Top-2 Runoff.
Steve Barney wrote (18 Sep 2002): > I've discovered a professional article on voting theory which seems > to confirm my argument (see > <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/election-methods-list/message/9057>) > that the IRV is more likely to elect a Condorcet candidate when one > exists (with sincere votes) than the two-stage runoff procedure > (assuming that the preferences remain fixed from one stage to the > next). Here is an excerpt from Table 1, page 6 (in this article, IRV > is called the "Hare" method): > > Table 1: Condorcet efficiencies for a random profile with 25 voters > by Merrill (1984) > procedure \ # alternatives 2 3 4 5 7 10 > RUNOFF 100,0 96,2 90,1 83,6 73,5 61,3 > HARE (TIES) 100,0 96,2 92,7 89,1 84,8 77,9 ****** In my opinion, the best multi-winner method in use today is Northern Ireland's fractional version of proportional representation by the single transferable vote. Markus Schulze ---- For more information about this list (subscribe, unsubscribe, FAQ, etc), please see http://www.eskimo.com/~robla/em
