Bob Crossley wrote:
I defer to Walabio's point about "Fair Votes" as I know nothing about US politics but I strongly suspect that they are currently getting a lot of support from across the Atlantic. You may have heard that in May the UK will have a referendum on introducing IRV (we call it AV, as you probably know), this being one of the trading-chips in the current Conservative/Liberal-Democrat coalition agreement.
I'm not a UK politics expert, but it seems this is a minimal concession, of the sort one would see in negotiation. AV/IRV doesn't really lead to multiparty systems, if Australia is to be any judge. Instead, you get two large parties and one middle sized party (as in Australia's Labor and LibNats), which is an improvement from Plurality, and definitely so from the point of view of the Liberal Democrats (who could become the middle sized party).
AV+ or STV/MMP would have been better, but alas. ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
