On Jul 5, 2008, at 6:13 AM, James Gilmour wrote:
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax > Sent: Monday, June 23, 2008 7:19 PM
But, in the United States, where I live, IRV
isn't replacing pure FPTP. It's replacing Top Two
Runoff (TTR). And it is pretty clear to me that
TTR is superior in just about every way,
I suspect all such judgements must in the end be matters of opinion,
but the French Presidential election of 2002 shows the major
failing of Top-Two Run-Off. I think many commentators would take
the view that IRV would have been superior to TTRO in that
election.
Had that election been by Exhaustive Ballot (eliminating one
candidate in each round) or by IRV, I am fairly sure that the final
contest would not have been between Chirac and Le Pen. It is also
reasonable to suggest that, in such circumstances, the eventual
winner would not have been Chirac, but a candidate much more
representative of the voters. The implications of a different result
for French politics during the subsequent five years would be pure
speculation on my part, so I'll leave it there.
An additional word on IRV vs TTR in San Francisco.
One of the main arguments for moving from TTR to IRV in SF was the
extremely low turnout in runoff elections--I suppose that's the TTR
equivalent of massive ballot truncation. I don't have the figures at
hand, but turnout for SF runoffs has been laughably low.
The limitation to three rankings is a function of the existing mark-
sense voting equipment. Presumably this limitation will be addressed
in time.
While SF IRV elections are nominally non-partisan, there are
effectively three (sometimes four) parties: business-oriented
Democrats, progressive Democrats, Greens, and from time to time
Republicans. The boundaries are fuzzy, and coalitions are fluid. With,
as Abd points out, as many as 22 candidates on the ballot, this
environment seems far from ideal for TTR.
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