[EM] Might IRV adoption be inevitable?

[Alex Small]

Markus Schulze said:
> 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

I have suggested before, and I'll suggest again, that almost any
single-winner election method better than plurality will lead to calls for
PR (of some sort, everybody has his favorite method) in the US.

Despite IRV's flaws, adoption of IRV would probably lead to third-party
candidates getting more first-place votes than the measly 2% or so that
they usually get in the US.  Remember that when there are 3 candidates, a
candidate with less than 25% of the first place votes will always be
eliminiated, and cannot act as a "spoiler" by knocking somebody else out
of the second round and then losing.  If election returns consistently
showed 15% or more support for a particular third party (a quite plausible
scenario under IRV) the unrepresentative nature of single member districts
will become obvious.  I call this plausible because the flaws of IRV will
not rear their head when the third candidate gets 15%, but the flaws of
single-memberf districts will become obvious.

If we adopt a method that leads to a significant number of third party
candidates winning legislative offices then we can be even more confident
of PR being adopted.  First of all, the third party legislators will
presumably push for PR.  Second, the legislature will probably be a very
poor reflection of the composition of the electorate with three or more
parties.

When you only have two parties, even with gerrymandering the party that's
most popular in the state is usually (but not always) the one that draws
the districts.  OK, there are states where one party controls the Senate
and the other the House (or Assembly, or whatever that state calls it),
but those states usually do not have a strong partisan preference.  (e.g.
As a Wisconsinite by birth and upbringing I can tell you that it made
perfect sense when WI had a GOP Assembly, a Democrat Senate, a
GOP-dominated House delegation, 2 Democrat US Senators, a GOP governor,
and a trend of voting Democrat in Presidential races.)

Anyway, any election reform that gives third parties a chance to at least
earn more support (even if they rarely win) will make more obvious the
flaws of single-member districts.  I think we could then see PR become a
serious issue.



Alex


----
For more information about this list (subscribe, unsubscribe, FAQ, etc), 
please see http://www.eskimo.com/~robla/em