[EM] No evidence that IRV doesn't fail. Reasons why it must.

[Paul Kislanko]

??? You said the same thing I did, but didn't recognize that's what you did.

>>Eric wrote:
>>
>>>Consider the case of a polarizing issue, such as Abortion. To
>>>those on either side, their last place vote will matter just as
>>>much as their first place vote. Even their middle preferences
>>  >will matter greatly as it puts a buffer between the viewpoint
>>>they agree with and the viewpoint the simply hate.
>>
>>There are a lot of implicit assumptions here about which voting method is
>>being used. You are assuming that fully ranked ballots are being used
>
>I have made no such assumption.

You make the same assumptions in this reply below.

>Pretend that Candidate A is pro-abortion. Candidate N is
>anti-abortion. The voter could easily rank:
>
>   A > B = ... = M > N
>
>If the voter sees no relative difference of candidates B - M, there
>is no need to fully rank them.

Exactly. So there's no reason to assume N is more "disliked" than M. In your
original post you didn't allow "=", but your example of a polarizing issue
would suggest
   A=B=C...>... X=Y=Z
and in your original post you suggested that that Z could be considered
"most disliked" in a ranked-ballot method, but with equal rankings allowed
your original suggestion is untenable.