FairVote is like a politician who tells people what they want to
hear. That's the art of spin. When it gets repugnant is when what's
being said is false. A post to the Approval Voting list, from which
I'm still banned from posting, referred to an article in the LA
times. It's worth noting that the author of this article has some
correct ideas, and he has merely been misinformed about the truth.
The truth isn't rocket science, but it is simply that there are
implications that often are overlooked by those not familiar with a field.
Opinion
Instant runoff voting
Such an electoral system saves time and money, and ensures a majority winner.
By Blair Bobier
December 10, 2008
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-oe-bobier10-2008dec10,0,6664124.story
Two examples from the seemingly never-ending 2008 election showcase
the system's flaws. More than a month after election day, we still
don't know who won Minnesota's Senate race. In Georgia's U.S. Senate
contest, it took two elections and tens of millions of dollars to
produce a winner. Both races could have been resolved quickly and
with less expense using instant runoff voting.
Less expense is a joke. IRV is expensive, and in a very close
election could be extraordinarily expensive. I haven't studied the
particular election, but what happened here was that the election was
close, and there are always a pile of ambiguous ballots, and
resolving the ambiguities, the way that we count votes here, can be
tedious. There are better ways to count, see various proposals I've
made for Public Ballot Imaging. This would quickly reduce ambiguous
ballots to a specific set, and the range of effects that they could
have on the outcome could be rapidly determined. If it is close
enough, then, there would be a clear and open basis for a legal
challenge to whatever conclusion the election officials issue, and a
rapid means of resolving the issue.
IRV results in higher numbers of spoiled ballots, some of which would
be ambiguous, and there are many more opportunities for ties.
Elimination sequence can affect the next stage of counting. In a
strong two-party system, IRV will *usually* work, and the only likely
tie is among the frontrunners, but it is quite unclear that IRV would
have created a big lead for one candidate or the other. It depends on
the exact configuration of candidates, and how many voters don't
fully rank, and so forth. On average, vote transfers don't change the
first preference order, so in a very close election, it will often
remain very close after transfers.
Georgia apparently requires a majority, which is a huge safeguard
against certain common election failures. Again, I haven't studied
it, but I presume Georgia was top-two runoff. While special elections
cost money, it's the price of democracy, in fact. IRV, we can now
tell, produces less democratic results than Top Two Runoff, for
reasons I won't address here. But it's certainly different, probably
differs from instant runoff in about one out of three runoff elections.
With instant runoff voting, voters indicate their first, second and
third choices among candidates on the ballot. If a candidate wins a
majority of first-choice rankings, that candidate is elected. If no
candidate receives an initial majority of first-choice rankings, the
candidate with the fewest first-choice rankings is eliminated and
that candidate's supporters have their votes count for their second
choice. The process repeats until a candidate emerges with majority support.
Now, the bait and switch is set up. Majority support. IRV
supporters repeat that phrase like a mantra, and it is directly
misleading, to the extent that we could say, with the ordinary
meaning of words, and the author does explore this, and he thinks
he's using the ordinary meaning from the argument he makes, it is
just plain false. Majority in elections means that more than half
the legal ballots, containing a valid vote, have voted for the
winner. Preferential voting, of which IRV is an example, though a
particularly poor one, can allow alternative votes which can be put
together, but majority still means the same thing. These methods,
in general, can discover a majority that would be missing if voters
vote sincerely in Plurality Voting, for their favorite alone. So, if
we insist on a majority, preferential voting reduces the need for
runoffs but does not eliminate it. In fact, until this year, which I
haven't examined yet, the large majority of instant runoffs held
did not find a majority.
Replacing the Georgia top-two runoff method with IRV would be a very,
very bad idea, a step backward, actually reversing older reforms,
moving away from democracy. Replacing Plurality with IRV, better, but
expensive, and there are other forms of voting, including
preferential voting, that are far cheaper and which perform better at
discovering majorities and at finding the best
