The Allure of IRV

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

Adam & Paul--

Ok it's true that people who've heard of rank balloting correctly
sense that it can give them something that can't otherwise be
gotten. I don't want to seem to be opposing the proposing of
Condorcet; it's my favorite too.

In fact, the 2000 Presidential election, and what followed, is
a convincing argument for the desirability of being able to vote
3 candidate merit levels instead of 2. A luxury of the best
Condorcet versions is that you can vote as many merit levels as
you want to. Three merit levels would be just right for me in the 2000
Presidential election, if that election were re-held tomorrow.

But compared to Plurality, Approval gives voters a lot more opportunity for 
expression,
and variety of ways to vote, different strategies, different ways
of saying something by your vote. And most important of all,
no matter what strategy you use, you can be assured that no one
will ever use the strategy of burying their favorite. Though Approval
doesn't let us vote all of our pairwise preferences, people will typically 
be voting about half of their preferences in Approval.

Of course I'd rather have the best Condorcet methods, ideally.

I guess my main concern with Condorcet proposals is that it takes
some listening, some attention, some study, for a person to understand
why one rank-count is better than another. I just don't know if
enough people will make that effort. And it's necessary that they
do, if we're going to get a _good_ rank-count adopted. People who
listen and take the necessary time will understand that Condorcet(wv)
is the rank-count that they want. But will enough people make that
effort?

Mike Ossipoff


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