instant runoff minority rule

[Bart Ingles]

Dear Marj Mullany:

Your message was forwarded to the election-methods list.  This is a
mailing list devoted to critical discussion about all election methods; 
I believe the list you originally posted to is only interested in ways
of promoting IRV.  For more information about the election-methods list,
see http://www.eskimo.com/~robla/cpr/election-methods/ 


I hope you don't mind if I attempt to answer your question.

As to why minority interests might be harmed by runoff elections or
instant runoff, consider that the minorities in question might already
be aware that they don't have a chance of electing their own candidate,
either with or without a runoff.

In this case the ability of a minority to sincerely rank a candidate
first is probably immaterial, since that candidate will merely be
eliminated first.  Instead, the minority group may be more interested in
"horse trading", i.e. trying to influence one of the major parties into
promising concessions in return for support.  For a minority in the 5% -
20% range, this is a much more realistic way to win something from an
election, and is probably as close as you can come to proportional
representation in a winner-take-all election for an executive office.

In single-vote plurality elections, it's easy to see how this might
work.  You need only look at the desperate last-minute attempts on the
part of Democratic party operatives to win over the Nader vote last
November, to see how much influence Nader & supporters could have had
over public policy if they had been willing to throw support to Gore in
exchange for concessions.

Runoff or instant runoff could short-circuit this.  In the Gore-Nader
example, the Gore camp would be less likely to go out of its way to
recruit Green support (or any other minority group or party), knowing
that the minority voters have nothing to lose by voting Gore second, and
nothing to gain by refusing to do so. Since the Gore camp is asking less
of the minority voters, it will probably offer less in return.


When the size of a faction is large enough that it becomes feasible to
try to actually win an election, runoffs and instant runoffs have
another inherent problem.   Because these methods don't really eliminate
the lesser-of-two-evils dilemma, voters must still vote strategically to
make sure that the candidate they help to reach the final round is
actually in a position to win.  The result of this situation is a sort
of "glass ceiling" which would tend to keep a third party from gaining
votes beyond a certain level, until it can grow large enough to be
widely perceived as a likely winner.


Fortunately better voting systems are now available.  When IRV was first
adopted in the U.S. and Australia, it might have seemed a reasonable
approach to the vote-splitting problem, but with the amount of study
that voting systems have received over the last few decades, it's now
possible to argue that IRV is as obsolete as the single-vote plurality
system we use in the U.S.

In addition to the link above, here are some other good links to voting
system information:

http://www.discover.com/nov_00/gthere.html?article=featbestman.html
http://whyfiles.org/shorties/068voting/
http://bcn.boulder.co.us/government/approvalvote/center.html
http://ElectionMethods.org/
http://RussP.org/ElectionMethods.org/Approved.htm

Yours,
Bart Ingles





>   ------------ Original Letter ------------
> To: instantrunoff <instantrunoff at yahoogroups.com>
> From: Marjorie and Jim Mullany <marjames at twrol.com>
> Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2001 20:24:08 -0700
> Subject: [instantrunoff] minority rule
> 
> Hi, All.
> 
>     In New Mexico it is against the state constitution to hold runoff
> elections for any major elections. I wrote to an acquaintance in the
> state legislature who has introduced at least two proposals to amend the
> constitution, but they died. She told me that minorities here are
> strongly opposed to runoffs of any kind, as they have historically hurt
> the minority interest. This kind of stumped me, I don't know how to
> argue against this because I don't see the sense in it, beyond a basic
> desire to circumvent the will of the majority. Perhaps the winner take
> all system is the key to minority rule.
>     This is a pretty difficult subject, I apologize if this offends
> anyone. Does anyone care to comment on this issue?
> 
>     Sincerely, Marj Mullany