I was briefly skimming the discussion area for Instant Runoff Voting in Wikipedia (available here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Instant-runoff_voting ), and noticed where one of the contributors complained that comparisons to Approval Voting ignored, quote, "its theoretical criteria include susceptibility to strategic voting, which is one of AV's greatest flaws. Approval Voting is notoriously easy to game: you simply don't vote for strong candidates that you actually approve of but are not your first choice. That strategy introduces the same spoiler effect as plurality. Approval also has a terrible history in the U.S." unquote. He then apparently removed material comparing IRV to Range and Approval voting because they were "not based on reliable sources." In addition, in a comment about the Yee diagrams, he said "all of the voters are voting honestly when in some systems there is an easy and highly advantageous means of tactical voting," though I'm not sure how voting strategically would make the choice diagrams for IRV rational.
I'm not trying to start an edit war on Wikipedia, but I do know there are some proponents of both methods who have made, to my mind at least, rather convincing arguments comparing the suitability of IRV to AV and RV. I thought it might be interesting to at least mention peer-reviewed analysis of IRV, Approval, and Range if someone knew of such a study. Michael Rouse ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
