[EM] About IRV

[wclark at xoom.org]

> Thought you all might be interested in this
>
> http://www.utahpolitics.org/archives/000173.shtml

That's a pretty scary article.  Most of those claims don't just apply to
IRV, but to pretty much any ranked system other than plurality.  It's
pretty much a pro-status-quo piece, more than anything else.

Consider:

"IRV panders to delegates with “Fast-Food Balloting” Promoters of IRV laud
the voting method's ability to "capture" as many voters as possible before
they go home. When the Founders created the constitution, it took them
days on end of meetings to do it. No one went home. They stayed until it
was done. Are we to throw in the towel now on our present system of voting
in deference to people who care so little about our political system that
they can't spend an extra hour or two once a year to make it work?"

So voter inclusion is a bad thing?  The answer to the problem of low voter
turnout is to blame everything on the lazy public, and nothing on the
system itself?

IRV actually does a pretty lousy job of "capturing" voters (and their
preferences) fully.  The above argument would apply even more strongly to
better ranking systems.

Also from the article:

“We indulge in conscious efforts to tear down the two-party system only at
our peril, since we cannot predict with any confidence what the character
and structure of American politics would be like without it.” Michael
Quaid http://www.vermontgop.org/quaid_irv.shtml

Scary.

-Bill Clark

-- 
Protest the 2-Party Duopoly:
http://votenader.org/