---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: MIKE OSSIPOFF <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2011 21:12:09 +0000 Subject: [EM] Reply to a few IRV arguments
I'm sorry, I can't find the message that I'm replying to. It was by an apparent IRV advocate. He said that claims about IRV's problems are "theoretical" or "hypothetical", and have never been observed. Of course that isn't true. In Australia, where IRV has been in use for a long time, various people have reported to us on EM that it isn't at all unusual for voters to bury their favorite to top-rank a compromise, so as not to "waste their vote". Sound familiar? That's what is done in Plurality, in this country, by everyone who doesn't consider the Democrat and Republican the best. dlw: Remind me, are voters required to rank all of the candidates in both elections? It may still happen, but it happens less with IRV. MO:And, in Australia, as here, there remains a two-party system, a political system with two large parties who always win. Here, that's the result of Plurality. Given the way people vote in Australia, and the reason that they give, that might be why Australia, too, has a two-party system. dlw: Not everyone thinks having a two-party dominated system is bad. Good luck getting electoral reforms in a two-party dominated system tilting to a single-party dominated system that level the playing fiield for all parties 100%. MO:Theoretical or hypothetical? IRV's compromise-elimination problem is blatantly obvious: All it requires is that candidate-strength (favoriteness) taper gradually away from the middle sincere CW. That's hardly an unusual state of affairs. dlw: Remind me what CW is? I view voter preferences as endogenous, more so than exogenous and fuzzy. I don't think we need to nail the center, so much as we need to have it moved via extra-political cultural change-oriented activities. This lets me deemph these purported flaws in IRV. MO:Under those conditions, eliminations begin at the extremes, and transfers send votes inwards, till the candidates flanking that middle CW accumulate enough votes to easily eliminate hir. We'll never know how often that happens unless the raw rankings are available from IRV elections. But it must happen quite often, given the common state of affairs that is its reqirement. Andy himself implied an admission that voters in IRV should be advised that sometimes it's necessary to bury their favorite, to top-rank a compromise. dlw: Some may think that this is wise. IRV doesn't leave no party behind. But they'd be voting like that a lot more often with plurality. Ultimately, though if folks want to change things, they need to do more than try to get the right party into power. MO:Do we want a method that needs that? Do we want that when there are plenty of methods that don't force that favorite-burial strategy? dlw: Do most people care? Not really. At the end of the day, it's just not that key of a facet of an electoral rule. IRV is a signicant improvement over FPTP. It's got a first-mover and a marketing edge over all other alternatives to FPTP in the US. There is no self-evident oft-used alternative. You all proffer four possibilities. That's not going to help rally folks around electoral reform. IRV+(PR in "More local" elections) is a sound prescription for making the US's political system a lot better, especially when coupled with even more critical political cultural changes, like what #OWS is trying to accomplish. This is what's going to be on the front-burner and so do you want to get behind it or do you want to try shoot its tires? Cuz, unless you got a clear alternative that is easy to market to US voters, the consequence will be to retain FPTP in the US for even longer. dlw Mike Ossipoff
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