There are at least two good answers to that criticism: 1. You know very well that, with voting systems, you get what you pay for, and you pay for what you get. An extra advantage or good property comes at a price. IRV meets MMC and is free of the chicken dilemma. Benham and Woodall likewise, and they additionally meet the Condorcet Criterion (CC). Though CC isn't really necessary, it often or usually is a good idea, for rank methods for official public elections, or even meetings or organizations, where IRV's compromise-elimination can make the method adversarial. Beatpath meets Mono-Raise, but has the chicken dilemma. It's a question of what has practical importance to voters, and what is merely an aesthetic criticism.
2. For a Beatpath advocate to criticize IRV or its hybrids for failing Mono-Raise is more than a little hypocritical, because Beatpath, like IRV, fails Participation and Mono-Add-Top. Additionally, Beatpath fails Mono-Add-Unique-Top, which IRV doesn't fail. As for the count difficulty or insecurity criticism, as I've said, an IRV count is little more than a series of Plurality counts. Each precinct can have its counts sent in to Central, and the Central results reported, just as in a Plurality election. The public imaging approach to security would work as well with IRV as with any method. As always, I disclaim that don't propose IRV , or any FBC-failing method, for current conditions, where the media have most people convinced that only the Democrat or Republican can win. The Greens offer IRV,and it would be fine for the Green scenario. Maybe the CW-preferrers won't like the elimination of their CWs (likely the Greens will be the CW-preferrers). If so, then there will be a majority who would like to change to a Condorcet-complying method. That will probably be Benham or Woodall. I've been told that Benham was actually first proposed by someone named Hill. I believe that Hill called that method "Condorcet-IRV". Condorcet-IRV is offered at the Condorcet Internet Voting Service (CIVS), as one of several rank-counts that CIVS offers. Condorcet-IRV: Do IRV till there's an uneliminated candidate who isn't pair-beaten by any other uneliminated candidate. Elect hir. Woodall: Do IRV till only one member of the Smith set remains uneliminated. Elect hir. Schwartz Woodall: Do IRV till only one member of the Schwartz set remains uneliminated. Elect hir. [end of definitions] I recommend Schwartz Woodall as my favorite general-purpose voting system for organizations, clubs, meetings, etc. But Condorcet-IRV is more briefly defined, and nearly as good. Sometimes Approval's social optimizations would make Approval the best choice. Voters often do better with Score than with Approval, because its fractional ratings mitigate strategic errors. Michael Ossipoff ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
