9. Dopp: Could necessitate counting all
presidential votes in Washington, D.C.
If the Electoral College were abolished and IRV
were then adopted for future national popular
vote elections for president, there would need
to be national coordination of the tally in
order to know which candidates got the fewest
votes nationwide and needed to be eliminated
just as in Ireland. But the actual counting of
ballots does not need to be federalized any more
than if IRV was not used, and could be conducted
by counties, states or whatever level is easiest
and most secure for that jurisdiction. Note that
voters certainly would be pleased to have a
majority winner in elections for our highest office.
This was not Dopp's strongest argument. However,
the counting would have to be centrally coordinated.
Now, as to "majority winners." IRV does not find
majority winners with any reliability. The claim
that it does is fabricated by redefining majority
to mean something else than it has always meant:
We have a majority winner when a majority of
those who voted in an election cast a vote for
the winner. They get majority winners,
guaranteed, in Preferential Voting elections in Australia. How do they do it?
They require that all voters fully rank all
candidates, or the ballot is considered informal
and is not counted. This is itself a violation of
standard parliamentary procedure, for standard
procedure is that a ballot is counted and
considered a part of the basis for majority as
long as it is not blank (Robert's Rules) or as
long as it contains at least one vote for an
eligible candidate (other parliamentary systems).
So that a ballot is invalidated when it contains
a vote for a candidate is a violation of a basic
principle of democracy. As FairVote knows,
obligatory full ranking doesn't have a snowball's
chance of seeing elections in the U.S., no
proposed implementations are anything other than
Optional Preferential Voting (except that there,
full ranking is still possible, in most
applications here, ranks are limited so exhausted
ballots are necessary for some sincere voters.)
And as the Australians know, once you have
ranking optional, you can get majority failure,
and, apparently, it is common and becoming even
more common, as rates of "plumping" (voting for
one only) are said to be increasing, see
http://www.abc.net.au/elections/federal/2004/items/200407/s1162263.htm,
which describes the political effect of Optional
Preferential Voting, which confirms much of what
I've said elsewhere in this set of articles.
The only method being used anywhere in public
elections that guarantees a majority winner is
real runoff voting. Top-Two Runoff suffers from
some of the same problems as IRV, it might seem:
it could fail to find a compromise winner.
However, most implementations of TTR allow
write-in votes, so TTR, in theory, is more
flexible than one might think. Nevertheless, TTR
always, in practice, finds majority winners.
That's why it's used! The major objection to it
is cost, yet IRV can be so expensive to count
that it's a poor solution to the cost problem. In
any case, the Vermont legislature, in the
preamble to its recent -- and recently vetoed -- IRV legislation, had this:
(1) The principle of majority rule is
fundamental to the concept of democracy. When
possible, election laws should be structured to
uphold and facilitate this basic principle.
(2) In a multicandidate race, when no candidate
receives a majority, the candidate with the most
votes (the plurality) may actually be the
candidate most opposed by the majority of voters.
...
(7) It would be desirable, and there is a
popular preference, to have a direct popular
election by majority vote in all elections for
the offices of U.S. senator and U.S. representative.
(8) A voting system known as preferential
voting in Roberts Rules of Order Newly
Revised, and popularly known as instant runoff
voting, which has been used for governmental
elections for over 80 years in Australia, as
well as in the Republic of Ireland, can fulfill
these goals of majority rule, with direct popular election.
The only problem with this preamble is the last
point. IRV cannot fulfill the goal of majority
rule. It does move some elections toward it. It
does better than Plurality. But it does not do
better than Top-Two Runoff, which *always* -- in
practice -- results in a true majority winner.
FairVote activists, confronted with this, will
claim that Top-Two Runoff is not fair because
turnout is lower, often, in runoffs. (It is not
necessarily true that turnout is lower. Sometimes
it is higher, it depends on conditions. In some
places the primary is, say, in October, with the
runoff, if needed, being with the general
November election. There, turnout tends to be level.)
However, it is a long established practice in
democracy that election decisions are made by
those who vote in the election. If an election is
properly held, the turnout isn't relevant, unless
there is some quorum requirement. What has often
been overlooked by those deploring low turnout is
that low turnout can reflect two conditions, but
summarized by indifference. The voters may be
indifferent in a top-two runoff because they
think both candidates are fine, so they will
accept either outcome, or they may think both
candidates are terrible, so they also don't
bother to vote. However, if they truly think both
candidates are terrible, if something went wrong
with the primary, and they organize themselves to
vote, they could write in any eligible candidate
they choose, including an eliminated candidate from the primary.
Top-two runoff satisfies the conditions that the
Vermont legislature thought important, and IRV does not.
That legislation, had it not been vetoed, would
probably have been found unconstitutional in
Vermont, because the Vermont Constitution has a
majority election requirement for some offices,
and I very much doubt that the Vermont Supreme
Court would accept the weaseling interpretations
that a last round majority, ignoring exhausted
ballots, is a true majority as required.
I've pointed out that we could satisfy a
unanimity requirement, easily, if that interpretation is allowed.
Just think about it, wouldn't it be desirable to
have unanimous elections. Well, for the minor
cost of a very complicated counting process, you
can have it! Just use IRV and continue the
elimination one more step, until all votes are
for one candidate. If that is not unanimity, why
is the step before it majority?
Answer: it isn't.
Continued with:
Dopp: 10. IRV entrenches the two-major-political party system
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