[EM] Nov. 2002 Libertarian Solutions and IRV

[Alex Small]

Douglas Greene said:
> http://www.lp.org/lpnews/0211/libsolutions.html
>
> Shall we LPers draft a response?

The most interesting part of the report is this:

"The instant runoff method assures that the least disliked candidate is
elected."

That's a dubious statement.  Even Donald would agree that IRV (just like
Condorcet) only uses ordinal information.  The IRV procedure doesn't
know (and doesn't care) whether your second place candidate is actively
disliked, or merely not liked as much as the first place candidate.  IRV
only knows that the candidate with the fewest first-place votes, however
liked he may or may not be, did not attract as much first-place support
as the other candidates.

Maybe a joint response with as many co-signers as possible is in order.
I suggest emphasizing the following points:

1)  Runoff methods (of which IRV and 2-step are the most common) aren't
nearly as effective as PR for promoting multi-party competition.
Australia and Louisiana come to mind.  Although Louisiana uses 2-step
runoff for state-wide races, when there are only 3 candidates with
significant support 2-step is roughly equivalent to IRV.  I haven't seen
many 3rd-party governors or Senators in that state.

2)  Approval Voting and some PR methods are much cheaper to implement, a
significant concern for a party of fiscal conservatives.

3)  Although AV doesn't have much field-testing in democracies, it's
easy to implement and academic work suggests significant advantages.

4)  Just as the party has left open a variety of PR options, the party
should leave open a variety of single-winner options.  Let there be a
debate in the marketplace of ideas.


Alex



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