[EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 1

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
> At 10:37 AM 12/5/2008, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
>> Something I've always wondered about Asset Voting. Say you have a very 
>> selfish electorate who all vote for themselves (or for their friends). 
>> From what I understand, those voted for in the first round become the 
>> electors who decide among themselves who to pick for the final 
>> decision. Wouldn't this produce a very large "parliament"?
> 
> No. It would produce a large "electoral college," which doesn't have 
> legislative power directly. As I'd have it, these small-vote electors 
> could not introduce motions or speak to the Assembly directly by right, 
> as anyone with a seat can.

I was a bit imprecise; I meant a large deliberative body when I said 
parliament, hence the quote marks.

But your description confused me somewhat, regarding what's the assembly 
and what's the electoral college. So let's be more specific. Say you 
want to use Asset voting to elect a president (or some other office, but 
let's call it president).

Now, the advantage of Asset is representation for everybody, right? So 
there seems to be two possible ways this could happen.

Either the first round is a vote for electors and the second round is a 
vote by the electors for the first outcome. In that case, you'd need a 
traditional single-winner method to decide the second outcome; only that 
the second round would be restricted to the electors and weighted by the 
votes they got in the first round....

... or, the first round vote for an elector (whoever, including yourself 
if it may be) is for the composition of a deliberative body that uses 
rules like RRO to determine a true majority decision (in this case, of 
who becomes president). If so, you're subject to all the scaling issues 
of a deliberative body - scaling issues that keep us from simply using 
direct democracy.

Which is it?

(Or does Asset voting imply proxy democracy?)