On Mar 3, 2010, at 1:58 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
robert bristow-johnson wrote:
Well, that's sad. Even with a sorta narrow victory the anti-
IRVers will swagger down Church Street like they own the place. We
will now all accept that God instituted the "traditional ballot"
for use forever and that a 40% Plurality is a "winner".
It would have been optimum if IRV survived this vote by a narrow
margin.
It's sad that when FairVote introduced and promoted the ranked
ballot that, from square 1, they always coupled it to the IRV
tabulation of votes. When enough disasters (at least anomalies)
happen like in Burlington or Aspen, some backlash, both ignorant
and enlightened, is bound to happen.
I think that shows that IRV is just not good enough. Of course, I
could be wrong: perhaps it is, as you said, an outcome on par with
"Bush wins the presidency -- in the supreme court",
here is a funny story from The Onion (about a year old):
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/supreme_court_overturns_bush_v
but if it was IRV itself that gave the opposition enough proverbial
ammunition, then that does count against the method.
Since I prefer Condorcet, I would say that a good method should
have elected Montroll. IRV didn't.
What's really bad is that now people will probably think that the
ranked ballot and IRV are one and the same - that the only way to
conduct a ranked ballot election is by using IRV.
i've been saying that myself, many times. to a lot of deaf ears in
Burlington.
What method will be used in Burlington now -- Plurality or runoff?
Since you said 40% earlier, I guess it's a runoff, but 40% sounds
odd as a runoff threshold. Shouldn't it be majority? Anything less
and the voters might have preferred someone else.
it's Plurality winner if 40% is reached. if no one gets 40%, it's a
runoff in about 3 weeks between the top two. if applied in 2009, the
runoff would be between the same two candidates, and there is a good
possibility that, with reduced turnout at the runoff, the election
would have come out differently.
--
r b-j [email protected]
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
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