Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
At 09:05 AM 12/25/2008, James Gilmour wrote:
Kristofer Munsterhjelm > Sent: Thursday, December 25, 2008 8:36 AM
> Do you think my runoff idea could work, or is it too complex?
My personal view is that runoff is not desirable and would be an
unnecessary and unwanted expense. I know runoff voting systems are
used in some other countries, but they are not used at all in the UK.
They are used in places with strong multiparty systems. The UK is a
two-party system.
The UK is also parliamentary, so I suppose there would be few places
where you could actually have a runoff. Scotland doesn't have runoffs
either, yet multiple parties grew there after its change from FPTP/SMD
to MMP. I'm not sure about Scottish politics, but I think there are
three or four main parties now.
I am satisfied that there are perfectly adequate "vote once"
systems available for all public elections, both single-office
elections and assembly elections.
If they are good for public elections, why are they *never* used for
smaller organizations where repeated ballot is easy? Wouldn't it save time?
Yes, advanced methods *can* save time, *if* a majority is still
required. Otherwise the result can *easily* be one that a majority would
reject. How often? Depends on the method, I'm sure, but my estimate is
that it's about one in ten for IRV in nonpartisan elections in the U.S.
It's pretty easy to show.
Wouldn't that be because you can do RRO type iteration because of the
small size? Consider the extreme, where there's just you and a few
friends. There would seem to be little point in voting when you can just
all discuss the options and reach a conclusion. Perhaps there would be
if you just can't reach an agreement ("okay, this has gone long enough,
let's vote and get this over with").
In short, you'd have something like: for very small groups, the cost of
involving a voting method is too high compared to the benefits. For
intermediate groups, iteration works. For large groups, voting is the
right thing to do, because iteration is expensive and may in any event
lead to cycling because people can't just share the nuances of their
positions with a thousand others, hive-mind style.
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