[EM] Approval Voting vs Instant Runoff Voting

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

> > Under Approval Voting, most people in your example will vote for only
> > C,

In Approval, people will vote only for their favorite if they think
they don't need their 2nd choice, because their favorite has a win.
Actually many who now voted only for Nader, because that was the only
way to express support for him, would vote for Nader & Gore in Approval.
So fewer, not more, people would vote only for their favorite.

IRVies always claim that everyone will suddenly start voting only for
their favorite. Regrettably, that won't happen. The millions of
Nader-prefering people who voted for Gore in November would, in Approval,
vote for Gore & Nader.

The irony is that IRV is the method that only gives you one vote,
and if it isn't on your compromise when s/he needs it, then your last
choice wins. IRV is the method where you'll sometimes regret that you
didn't vote your 2nd choice over your 1st choice. Approval is the
method with which no one ever has any incentive to dump their favorite
by voting someone else over him. IRVies say you can safely rank your
favorite 1st. They forget to mention that that's only true if your
favorite is a sure loser. IRV offers progressives a pretense of
strategy-freeness. IRVies remind me of a salesman promoting a
cheap paint-sprayer. Approval is like a simple, reliable, solid hand-tool, 
such as a paintbrush. IRV is like a cheap automatic paint-sprayer,
which, every so often, will empty half of its paint-tank into your
face, on your clothes, and the drapes, ceiling & carpet, when it
starts spraying paint in every direction.

The IRVie salesman boasts the greater convenience of a paint sprayer.
He won't tell you about the times when all the paint ends up in your
face.

And that's what the IRVies are: promoters. It's regrettable that
a completely inadequate voting system is being pushed through by
promoters who are too arrogant to inform themselves, and too dishonest
to share any negative information on IRV with their sales-victims.



Another reason why ordinary Runoff is better than IRV is because
if a sincere CW comes in 1st or 2nd in the primary, s/he can't lose.
In IRV, a CW can be favorite of more people than any other candidate is,
and still lose. That's a very plausible IRV scenario, and is likely
to be typical--whenver support tapers gradually away from the voter
median candidate.

>If this candidate happens
>to be
> > > your first choice, fear not, your vote will not be dropped.

Not reassuring when your crucial 2nd choice compromise isn't there
anymore because he got eliminated while your single traveling vote
was on your favorite. Your vote will not be dropped? Your preference
for Middle over Worst won't get counted. At least Approval reliably
counts every preference that you vote. As I said, I prefer to be the
one who decides which of my pairwise preferences will be counted.

Mike Ossipoff



_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com