The debate over alternative voting systems rages on...
On Wednesday, March 16, 2005, at 04:11 PM, Steve Cross wrote, in response to Robin Garwood:
I, as a strong Green partisan, would certainly vote for as many candidates as I could accept for the office, in order of my preference.
Again, is your desire to vote Green so weak that you concede that a DFLer fits your bill too? I'd suggest that maybe it is more likely that people who vote Green wouldn't want to vote for a DFLer any more than they'd vote for a Republican. It fundamentally seems to me that IRV is based on the false presumption that there isn't much difference between any of the political parties.
Steve--doesn't this directly conflict with your recently suggested party-list system? Is one DFLer as good as any other?
Doesn't such a system also place even greater emphasis on the party system, which is one of the points of frustration for many voters?
In the current mayoral race, for example, how would a party-list system work? Would only DFLers be allowed to pick which candidate is at the top of the list, and then voters pick between the DFL list and some other list?
My concern with the party-list system is that it doesn't allow voters to distinguish between individual candidates, who often represent very different aspects of a particular party. Also, we now have an electorate that increasingly identifies with no party whatsoever. Wouldn't this system actually alienate those voters even more?
One advantage of IRV is that voters are further encouraged to understand the differences among various candidates, because it isn't as simple as party label. Perhaps some hard core DFLers will only vote for the DFLer, but what would that accomplish? In a tight 3-way race, doesn't it make sense that we elect candidates who best reflect the will of the people?
Let's say, for example, that we have a race that includes candidates from all four parties. For argument's sake, let's say that 72% of the people prefer one of the three other candidates to the Republican candidate--they are fairly evenly divided, however. Consider the possible election results:
Republican -- 28% Democrat -- 26% Green -- 24% Independence -- 22%
Without IRV, the Republican wins, even if 70% of the people would rather have any of the three other candidates (2% ranked the Republican as their second choice)--this doesn't seem to make much sense. With IRV, further preferences are considered. Let's say that of the Independence candidate voters, 5% felt that no other candidate reflected their views, 9% supported the Green candidate, and 6% supported the Democrat candidate.
After the first IRV calculation, the results are:
Republican -- 30% Democrat -- 32% Green -- 33%
Still pretty close, but a big difference. Perhaps Steve is right about some voters, and 20% of those preferring the Republican candidate didn't have a further choice. 3% of them liked the Democrat, and 7% of them liked the Green candidate. After the second IRV calculation, the results are:
Democrat -- 35% Green -- 40%
This doesn't get to the majority, but that's because we assumed that a significant portion of the electorate didn't express a second choice. I agree that the majority is desirable, but not the only advantage of IRV. Note that this achieved a result of a Green candidate victory, because voters found that candidate to be preferable to others, even if some of them had a different first choice. This does not even account for any voters who selected the Democrat as their first choice and the Green as their second--it is quite possible that 70% of the voters ranked the Green candidate as either their first or second choice. The election of the Green candidate is a much better reflection of the will of the electorate in this case--remember that 70% of the voters preferred ANY of the other three candidates.
I know that there are many aspects of IRV that need to be addressed, but I think that the key is that any election system should have this goal--the candidate elected should best represent the will of the people voting.
David Weinlick Armatage
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