[EM] Re: IRV vs. Plurality

[Joe Mason]

On Sat, Sep 06, 2003 at 04:40:58PM -0700, Rob LeGrand wrote:
> I like it.  My only worry is that the candidates themselves might be far
> less willing to compromise than the voters.  In the California
> gubernatorial "race", Bill Simon pulled out to avoid drawing votes away
> from Schwarzenegger, but he's an exception.  Most of the candidates are
> running despite not having any chance of winning, and many of them (Arianna
> Huffington, Tom McClintock, Peter Camejo, etc.) are likely to take
> significant votes away from the frontrunners.  A candidate would seem to
> care much more about his own, even slim, chances than about who ends up
> winning.  When I ran for state rep in Texas, I wouldn't have considered
> voting for one of my major-party opponents even if I had vastly preferred
> one to the other.  (I didn't.)

There are secondary targets when running beyond winning the whole thing,
though - ISTR the US having a threshold at 5% of the votes for a party
to get better consideration in the next election, for instance, and less
formally there are single-issue parties who merely want to gather votes
they can point to during negotiations or publicity campaigns to show how
many people support their cause.  I suspect many of the California
governor candidates just want to see how much they can get, perhaps to
kick-start a political career.

I'd think people would be much more willing to compromise in an Approval
situation, or if they weere still able to use non-proxy votes for pride
or publicity.

Joe