[EM] IRVie majority

[Norman Petry]

Mike wrote:

>
>Maybe it should be clarified again that the IRVies have their
>own unique definition of what it means for a candidate to have
>a majority:
>
>IRVies claim that after IRV eliminates all but 2 candidates, and
>a majority of all the voters prefer one of those to the other
>(as they surely will if no one equal-rates any candidates),
>then that means that that more preferred of those 2 candidates
>"has a majority" and is a "majority winner".
>

What I find particularly amusing about Don Davison's reasoning is that not
only does he now strongly advocate IRV (Single-winner STV), but he is also a
huge fan of the Hare quota.  Of course, since the Hare quota for
single-winner STV is 100% of the voters, I'm surprised that Don limits
himself to claiming the IRV winner is elected by a a mere 'majority', when
he is able to claim that winner achieves *consensus* :-)  Why stop at
transferring up to 50% of the votes to the 'winning' candidate, when you can
transfer them all?

In other words, no matter who wins under IRV(Hare), they are the consensus
winner!  We could hardly do better than that.  Since whoever wins under this
system can claim to be supported by 100% of the voters, perhaps Don should
consider advocating the following system instead, which is similar to IRV
but has fewer strategy problems and offers the same advantage:

1) Collect ranked ballots, as in IRV
2) Choose the winner randomly
3) Transfer ballots as in IRV, except that the winner is protected from
elimination.
4) Once all the ballots have been transferred to the (random) winning
candidate, they are declared the winner (having achieved 100% support).

Of course if Don has some objection to IRV(Hare), he is being inconsistent,
but fortunately the above system works equally well with the Droop quota, if
all he wants is a 'majority'.


--
Norm Petry