[EM] Long version of IRV letter

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

Instant Runoff (IRV) has big problems that its promoters don't
talk about. They boast that IRV lets you
express all of your preferences, but they forget to mention that
it may or may not count them. When your 2nd choice compromise is
eliminated because your traveling vote hasn't reached him/her yet,
and your last choice wins, then your preference for Compromise over
Worst hasn't been counted. IRV is a game of chance.

That results in big violations of majority rule, and it brings back
the old lesser-of-2-evils problem; voters will often regret that they
didn't bury their favorite by ranking Compromise in 1st place.

The IRV advocates' claim that IRV elects someone with a majority
is a silly fallacy. Someone suggested facetiously: If IRV elects
a majority winner because when it's eliminated everyone but 2
candidates it elects whichever of those the people prefer, then
let's take it a step further, and do one more elimination, and
transfer all the votes to the 1 remaining candidate. Then we
elect a unanimity winner. Why settle for a majority winner when
we can have a unanimity winner :-)

Suppose we eliminated everyone but the 2 most despised candidates
and elected whichever of those is preferred by a majority to the
other. Is that a majority winner in any meaningful sense?

The legitimacy of IRV's choice between the last 2 candidates, and
the resulting "majority winner"
depends on the legitimacy of the count rule that eliminated all
the others. And how to IRV advocates justify that count rule?
Why, because it elects a "majority winner". :-)
Circular reasoning.

IRV's "majority" is a manufactured majority with no meaning except
to the promoters of IRV.

IRV can eliminate a candidate who is the voted favorite of  more
people than any other candidate, even if s/he would beat each
one of the others in separate 2-candidate elections, based on
the preferences expressed in the voted rankings.

IRV will do other funny things: Moving someone from 1st choice to
last choice in your ranking can make him/her win. The fact that you
show up & vote sincerely can cause your voted last choice to win, where
s/he wouldn't have won if you hadn't voted. Even Plurality won't do
those things. Improvement?

Mike Ossipoff



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