[EM] Letter from IRV Supporter

[Eric Gorr]

Resulted from some letters I wrote to people who support moving towards IRV.
Just thought people here would be interested in either confirming or 
learning about some of the arguments people will use in support of 
IRV.

--
Thanks for your input and concern.  I checked out your
information and understand that Condorcet and other systems of
voting may have some advantages over IRV.  However, given the
complexity of these systems, it seems unlikely that we'll be able
to achieve them right off the bat--without getting voters
familiar with preferential voting of some sort first.  While IRV
may not be the holy grail, it is certainly better than the status
quo.

Although IRV may not break the two party system, it ensures a
majority winner rather than a plurality winner, clearly a good
thing.  When replacing traditional run offs, as in San Francisco,
IRV boosts turnout and saves money.  While it is pretty unlikely
that IRV will lead to the actual election of 3rd party
candidates, it will allow voters to show support for third party
candidates without wasting their vote, and therefore eliminate
the spoiler effect.  Some third party folks like this, some don't
-- they see the spoiler role as giving them more power.  But,
from the voters point of view, IRV undisputably gives them
greater ability to register their true intentions (they can
always still spoil if they want to by refusing to rank any
candidate past the first one.