re:[EM] The Allure of IRV

[Alex Small]

I concur with Adam.  Once you support ranking, unless you've heard of
Condorcet the runoff idea makes intuitive sense, since plenty of places in
the US use 2-stage runoff.  The question is how to sell Condorcet over IRV.

My original message was prompted by an argument with a very intelligent
person who heard of an election in Ireland where IRV happened to find the
centrist.  She concluded (justifiably) that if France had used IRV instead
of two-stage runoff the final round would likely have had at least one
liberal or moderate rather than two conservatives.  A liberal vs. a
conservative may or may not be as good as a centrist vs. one of those, but
it offers more freedom of choice than conservative vs. ultra-conservative.

I tried Hitler-Stalin-Washington on her (not those names, but that idea)
but she pointed to the Irish example.  She is very intelligent.  However,
take the intuitive notion of runoffs and combine it with an anecdote of a
very good result under IRV, and even a very intelligent person like my
fellow student will be difficult to persuade.

(It probably doesn't help that I'm a Libertarian and hence I frequently
clash with her on politics.  If people don't like the messenger the message
will fall on deaf ears.  Hence it's important for people from different
third parties to collaborate when selling Approval or Condorcet.)

I tried summability, thinking that an engineer would appreciate the
difference between exponential scaling and n^2 scaling.  She didn't care.
I said that the Condorcet candidate is by definition the one whom the
electorate prefers.  She said "Well, it seemed to work pretty well in
Ireland."

Any thoughts on how to overcome the tag-team combo of IRV's seemingly
intuitive nature and IRV anecdotes?  I'm sure CVD is collecting such
stories.

Alex

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