[EM] Approval vs. IRV

[James Cooper]

hi everyone,

I'm a activist in Washington state who is interested in eliminating
the plurality system here.  We have a state-wide inititiative trying
to get on the ballot in 2005 (http://www.irvwa.org/).  It proposes
using IRV.  In addition, it would eliminate the general primaries in
Washington, and just use IRV in November for all the candidates across
the parties. 

I've been doing petitioning for I-318, but I've also been reading a
variety of information on the web, and have found the arguments
against IRV compelling.  However, most of the objections are technical
in nature.  

I am convinced of the technical superiority of Condorcet over other
methods.  However, the lack of any real world implementations to point
to, and the difficulty of explaining the tie-breaker make it very
difficult to explain to voters.  And voter education is sort of what
this petitioning thing is all about.  It's difficult to keep their
attention for 30 seconds. 

So I'm down to looking at IRV vs. Approval (Approval being completely
trivial to explain).

The Center for Voting and Democracy (a group I generally agree with)
has stated its preference for IRV over Approval.  There are two
relevant links:

http://www.fairvote.org/irv/approval.htm

Article in Science magazine:
http://www.fairvote.org/op_eds/science2001.htm


The most compelling argument against IRV in my mind is the empirical
evidence from Australia.  3rd party candidates are still not viable,
and voters still vote tactically.  The requirement to rank all the
candidates also results in some odd side effects (like 'how to vote'
cards, and the horrific 'donkey vote').

The most compelling argument against Approval voting from the Science
mag article is the idea that it will result in non-substantive
campaigns where candidates try to come across as totally inoffensive
in order to gain approval from as many voters as possible.  


I realize this list is largely technical in nature (judging from the
archives that I've read).  But would anyone care to comment on these
issues (sort of non-technical) issues?

It strikes me that this reform will involve a lot of discussions with
citizens about what "fairness" means in a single-winner election.

I guess this is why everyone seems jazzed about Condorcet.  

btw, here's the results of a mock vote that I put up.  I think it's
interesting that IRV still gets Kerry elected, but Condorcet elects
David Cobb (ok, so all my friends are total leftists..)

http://www.bitmechanic.com/vote/results.php


thanks!

-- James