[Election-Methods] IRV/Approval/Range comparisons on Wikipedia

[Michael Rouse]

I was briefly skimming the discussion area for Instant Runoff Voting in 
Wikipedia (available here: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Instant-runoff_voting
), and noticed where one of the contributors complained that comparisons 
to Approval Voting ignored, quote, "its theoretical criteria include 
susceptibility to strategic voting, which is one of AV's greatest flaws. 
Approval Voting is notoriously easy to game: you simply don't vote for 
strong candidates that you actually approve of but are not your first 
choice. That strategy introduces the same spoiler effect as plurality. 
Approval also has a terrible history in the U.S." unquote. He then 
apparently removed material comparing IRV to Range and Approval voting 
because they were "not based on reliable sources." In addition, in a 
comment about the Yee diagrams, he said "all of the voters are voting 
honestly when in some systems there is an easy and highly advantageous 
means of tactical voting," though I'm not sure how voting strategically 
would make the choice diagrams for IRV rational.

I'm not trying to start an edit war on Wikipedia, but  I do know there 
are some proponents of both methods who have made, to my mind at least, 
rather convincing arguments comparing the suitability of IRV to AV and 
RV. I thought it might be interesting to at least mention peer-reviewed 
analysis of IRV, Approval, and Range  if someone knew of such a study.

Michael Rouse