[EM] publicly acceptability of election methods

[James Gilmour]

Russ Paielli  Sent: Wednesday, March 23, 2005 5:12 AM
> As far as I know, STV is a generalization of IRV for multi-winner elections.

Or maybe IRV is special case, simplification of STV.  (Which was the chicken and which was the egg?)

> So the reasons for IRV's popularity apply to STV to some extent.

The representation arguments and the political arguments for STV-PR are very different from those for IRV, especially if
IRV is advocated ONLY for those elections that are truly single-winner elections, eg city mayor, state governor.

> Yes, STV is more complicated than IRV, but I think 
> people tend to be more open to complexity for multi-winner elections 
> because there is perhaps no way to achieve proportional representation 
> without it. For single-winner elections PR doesn't apply and they expect simpler 
> election rules.

Because IRV is a special case application of STV that makes redundant many of the standard provisions of STV (PR) rules,
here in the UK we tend to write special case rules for IRV, using quite different language.  See, for example,
http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/votingsystems/avrules.htm
This is the text I codified for the ERS in 1978.  (NB "IRV" has been known in the UK for many decades as the
"Alternative Vote".)
James Gilmour