[EM] Why IRV is popular

[RLSuter at aol.com]

In a message dated 3/13/05 3:52:05 AM Eastern Standard Time,
jarmyta at antioch-college.edu writes:

>>IRV is much easier to explain than Condorcet, and I believe that
>>is the primary reason that it is more popular.
>
> Jim Lindsay is probably speaking from experience when he says
> that IRV is only "somewhat" easy to explain.

The basic concept of Condorcet, which I think should be called
Instant Round Robin (IRR) because like IRV it is basically a
self-explanatory term whereas "Condorcet" is not self-explanatory
at all, is easier to explain than Instant Runoff. You just explain that
the purpose of IRR is to simulate one to one contests between
each candidate and each other candidate. The candidate who
defeats all the others in one to one contests is the winner.
Challenge your audience to give one good reason why the
candidate who defeats all the others one to one should not be
elected. It's virtually a no brainer. The reasons anyone gives
are sure to be both debatable and complicated, and probably
the only people who will come up with any reasons at all are
people who have been sold already on IRV. IRR is at least as
easy to explain as IRV, whose purpose is to simulate a series
of rounds of runoff elections, with one candidate eliminated
per round. That raises a lot of questions. Why, for example,
eliminate only one per round when in conventional runoff
elections the typical procedure is to eliminate all but the top
two? Yes, I know there are reasons, but they require
explanation, which increases the difficulty of explaining IRV.

The only problem with IRR is when there is no Condorcet winner.
But as far as I know, elections with no CW are totally theoretical.
For them to happen would require voters to seriously confused
about their preferences for different candidates. Does anyone
know of a single actual election conducted with IRR where there
was not a Condorcet winner? Furthermore, there are problems
with IRV that are at least as serious as the theoretical problem
of an election without a Condorcet winner, especially the problem
of IRV spoilers. The one advantage of IRV is that the certainty
of coming up with an indisputable winner using that method is
perhaps greater than with IRR. But what kind of advantage is
that? The certainty of coming up with in indisputable winner
with plurality is about the same as with IRV.

-Ralph Suter