On Feb 24, 2011, at 9:43 PM, Kevin Venzke wrote:
I don't think IRV opponents will criticize that IRV is vulnerable to strategic voting.
this "opponent" does. (quotes used because i voted to retain IRV in Burlington VT last year.)
IRV did not eliminate the burden of strategic voting, but it merely transferred the burden from the majority block (in Burlington, that would be Liberals) to the minority block (the Conservatives). in the 2009 election, there were 1513 "GOP Prog-haters" that found out after the election that if 429 of them had understood that their guy wasn't going to win, if just 429 of them had insincerely bumped up their 2nd choice over their sincere 1st choice, they could have prevented their least favorite candidate from winning (and their 2nd choice would have won). now, if IRV had survived to the next election, what would these conservative voters be thinking in the polls? "In this liberal town, I gotta choose between Liberal and More Liberal, because if I vote for the guy I really like, More Liberal gets elected." That is vulnerable to strategic voting and the strategy is called "compromising".
Or else IRV opponents can criticize non-monotonicity or other things. But, I don't usually see people argue that non-monotonicity will be exploited by strategic voters.
it's pretty hard to exploit safely, but we also found out that the Burlington mayoral election in 2009 (using IRV) was not monotonic either. the Prog candidate won the IRV election and if about 745 of these GOP voters had changed their mind and vote from the GOP candidate (as their 1st choice) to the Prog candidate, that would have caused the Prog to lose. that is clearly non-monotonic.
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