Let's found an organization to oppose IRV

[Bart Ingles]

Blake Cretney wrote:
>
> But perhaps you can help me with what I consider to be the biggest
> problem with approval.  Because in approval you must place all
> candidates in one of two conditions, you run into problems if there are
> a large number of reasonable candidates.
> 
> For example, if parties started running their presidential candidates
> directly in the election, instead of a primary, then a voter has to make
> a choice.  Do I use my ballot to distinguish between candidates from my
> party, and therefore increase the danger of the other party winning, or
> do I vote a strict party slate and get no opportunity to distinguish
> between the candidates of my party.

That's like asking "when I come to a fork in the road, should I turn
right or left?"  The question is meaningless unless you can specify
which fork in which road, and where you wanted to go in the first place.

Obviously you need to determine which of your party's candidates are
substantially better than the opposing party's, and weigh the compromise
of voting for more candidates against the increased odds of winning.


> When the result comes in it doesn't appear to me to be terribly
> meaningful.  If one party triumphs over another, than can just mean that
> it's supporters were more willing to ignore differences between its
> candidates.

But the question is why are they more willing to ignore differences
between candidates?  Don't you think that having better candidates could
have something to do with this decision?

> [...]   If one candidate wins among the candidates of one party,
> that may just mean that his supporters were more willing to risk loss to
> the other party.  Kind of like a game of "chicken".

Or that there is more perceived difference between candidates of that
party.  Kind of like making a simple cost/benefit decision.


> For this reason, I see IRV as being substantially better than approval
> when there are a large number of winnable candidates.

Even though IRV's ability to elect Condorcet winners is much lower when
there are a large number of candidates?  

Bart