See this report on the Burlington 2009 IRV pathologies: http://rangevoting.org/Burlington.html
one of the co-authors, Anthony Gierzynski, is a UVM professor who lives in Burlington. The report refutes a lot of lies commonly told about IRV, and concludes that this election "singled out IRV & plurality as nearly-uniquely bad performers [among all commonly-proposed election methods]." Given this experience, I would suggest that Burlington switch to a method different from plurality and different from IRV. Some obvious contenders are approval and range voting. The difficulty is, that due to the fact that the world in general and Burlington in particular, is inhabited by morons, the ballot issue probably is going to consist of exactly of the two worst choices "(a) IRV or (b) go back to plurality?" with no third choice being offered. Furthermore, without a decent voting system, even HAVING an election with 3 or more choices, is rendered dubious and risky. Ludicrous, isn't it? Let me drive it home with an analogous and equivalent scenario. 1. voters decide to replace "trials in which your guilt or innocence is decided by flipping a coin" with "summary executions without trial" in order to save money. 2. It works out badly. 3. A referendum is proposed to a switch back to the old system. 4. Everybody is told "look, the DEMOCRATIC PROCESS decided to go with either (a) or (b), therefore this must be the best of all possible worlds, so quit complaining because plainly no improvement is possible over our fine system of justice." How many years must be wasted on this nonsense? How many lives? -- Warren D. Smith http://RangeVoting.org <-- add your endorsement (by clicking "endorse" as 1st step) and math.temple.edu/~wds/homepage/works.html ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
