[EM] Can someone point me at an example of the nonmonotonicity of IRV?

[rob brown]

On Sun, Aug 10, 2008 at 9:58 AM, Kathy Dopp <kathy.dopp at gmail.com> wrote:

> I am currently not recommending *any* until I have more time and
> inclination to sit down to thoroughly study all the alternatives. I
> know that IRV is a really bad method as applied to real life
> elections, and I suspect that most other voting methods are superior
> to IRV in crucial ways that would make them more practical and
> desirable.
>

Maybe you should go ahead and do that research before you go on an on about
how one method is "insane"....?

I'm no fan of IRV, but I do think it is a step in the right direction vs.
plurality (I prefer condorcet methods, which would be a fairly easy
transition if people are already accustomed to ranked ballots).

Every method has problems, some fewer than others.  For me, the ability to
strategically manipulate a method is by far the one of most concern, because
it will tend to get exploited more and more over time as candidates and
organizations adapt to exploit the system (in a rather Darwinian way).
Plurality and range are the big offenders in that category, in my opinion.

You speak of voters not knowing what to do..... "I prefer knowing whether
or not I should rank a candidate first, middle or last to help that
candidate win".  I'd suggest you rank your candidates in the order you
prefer and be done with it.  Can you actually come up with a real world IRV
situation where a voter (with imperfect information about how others will
vote) would be smarter to rank their favorite candidate lower than first,
given that they only care about that one candidate?

More realistically, the voter will *not* only care about their first choice
candidate, and that is when the "voter paralysis" situation becomes a lot
more severe in methods such as plurality, approval and range. (i.e. should
you vote for your first choice or another one that you think has a better
chance of beating the candidate you really dislike?)

-rob
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