>Bob Richard <lists001 <at> robertjrichard.com> >Subject: Re: Learning from IRV's success >It turns that real live voters (including real live politicians) care a lot >about the later-no-harm >criterion, even if they don't know what it's called. >--Bob Richard
--I think that's bullshit. IRV got "successful" i.e. was adopted in Australia, Ireland, etc in the early 1900s, before "later no harm" was even thought of. Obviously, nobody gave a hoot about it at the time IRV achieved its success. There have been tiny later successes of IRV after the early 1900s but they were small by comparison. The people doing that then tried to invent LNH as a post-rationalization and desperate baloney-argument for why IRV was a great voting method, since it as very hard to think of good reasons IRV was a good voting method. The reason for IRV's success is simple: its proponents were in the right place at the right time early, and very few other voting methods had even been thought of so it had little competition. In other words, it's largely an accident. One might also ask "why has range voting been so successful?" Range voting was adopted in two of the earliest and most successful partial-democracies, ancient Sparta and Renaissance Venice. Those both lasted far longer and under tougher circumstances than any IRV country. Indeed, it could be argued these were the two most successful democracies of all time. So Range Voting was a great success. Why was that? Well... as far as why Sp. & Ve. adopted range voting, this is unknown, the story of how that decision got made is basically lost to history (and/or largely mythologized). It is suspected that the reason the Catholic Popes were elected by an approval-voting-like process for several centuries was because the pope (Celestine V) who started that system knew about the Venetian system and knew it was successful. So at least in that case, we have a good idea why it happened. I have tried in my limited manner to examine the Pope Elections in this era and it appears their approval-like system worked pretty well for them despite immense pressures placed upon it; and it also appears IRV would not have worked well for them and probably would have turned the papacy into a permanent family dynasty and then there would have been (more) wars... http://www.rangevoting.org/SpartaExec.html http://www.rangevoting.org/VeniceExec.html http://www.rangevoting.org/PopeSummary.html http://www.rangevoting.org/PopeApprovalSystem.html -- 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
