On Nov 26, 2008, at 8:30 AM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
Personally, I don't think that any available single-winner method,
IRV
not excepted, is particularly "great", though I prefer ranked-ordinal
methods to FPTP or TTR.
It's almost certainly true that TTR has generally better results
than IRV. Essentially, when needed, two ballots are better than one.
Three would be better than two! Democratic process skips all this
crap and iterates binary decisions, with a majority requirement to
make any decision. It continues to iterate until a majority is
found, or a majority decides to adjourn....
None of the Above is always on the ballot with true democratic
elections, and doesn't have to be a named candidate. With Approval,
for example, just write it in! Lizard People would have been fine.
This (TTR vs IRV) is a matter that we can simply disagree on. I'd set
three-rank IRV aside as an unfortunate but hopefully temporary
response to voting equipment limitations. My problem with TTR is that
it's almost as bad at encouraging strategic voting as FPTP is. Better,
yes, but not good. Approval is also a strategy game that I'd rather
not play; sure, I can imagine elections in which Approval is easy and
relatively non-strategic, but it's also easy to imagine otherwise.
I confess that I'm partial to the iterative process, at least under
the right circumstances. US political parties have used it in the
past, and it's suitable to an open-ended convention setting. The US
Greens used a kind of "live IRV" in their 2004 convention, with
multiple vote-for-one rounds with elimination and/or withdrawal
between rounds. But there are lots of reasons that we don't want an
open-ended process for public elections, or even a process (like
GPUS-2004) that guarantees eventual termination, but with an uncertain
number of rounds. I prefer the IRV compromise to TTR or Approval.
BTW, most of the list will probably be aware that the second round of
the Georgia (US) TTR senatorial election will be held next Tuesday.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_election_in_Georgia,_2008
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