[EM] Might IRV adoption be inevitable?

[James Gilmour]

> >I wrote (1 March 2003):
> > I don't think there any necessary connection between promoting
> > IRV and promoting PR by STV. (...) Most who argue for IRV in
> > public elections here, do so as a means of preventing any move
> > towards PR.
>
>Markus asked:
> Is this statement only valid for IRV supporters? Or do you think
> that also Approval Voting supporters and Condorcet supporters
> rather hurt than help the move towards PR-STV?

There are no supporters of Approval Voting and no supporters of Condorcet voting
in the UK.  At least, no one is promoting either of these systems for use in
public elections.

Apart from the army of "Keep First-Past-The-Post" supporters, the main opponents
of STV-PR promote MMP(= AMS) or some form of Party List PR.  Both MMP and Party
List are highly defective and fall far short of delivering what STV-PR can give to
the voters.


> Markus then asked:    In your opinion,
> which single-winner method should those people who want
> to promote PR-STV for parliamentary elections promote for
> single-winner elections when they don't want their effort
> for better single-winner elections to hurt their effort for
> the introduction of PR-STV?

In the UK context, IRV is the obvious choice, primarily because it is the same
system of voting (preferential with fully transferable votes) applied to a
single-seat election.  But this is only for directly elected posts like Mayor (or
Governor), not local representatives (council members) where IRV is sometimes
suggested as a 'stepping stone' towards PR.  It isn't.

NB We do not have any voting technology problems of the kind that affect voting
reform decisions in the USA, at least not yet.  Nearly all UK public elections are
recorded on paper ballots and counted by hand.  We do now have some machine
counting of paper ballots and there have been several pilots with a variety of
electronic systems, and more pilots are planned.  Note also that in Ireland in the
2002 general election, they used a totally electronic system for STV-PR in three
constituencies and it worked well.


> > I wrote (1 March 2003):
> > We have very few directly elected single-office public elections
> > in the UK. However, when advocates of STV-PR are asked about such
> > elections, they usually recommend IRV (despite all its defects).
>
> Markus asked:
> Which election method do you recommend for directly elected
> single-office public elections?

For the moment, IRV, and that is the one I use.  I shall be supervising the IRV
count for the election of the Rector of the University of Edinburgh next Friday
evening.  There are five candidates and all students and staff of that University
can vote.

James

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