[Election-Methods] Re : A Better Version of IRV?

[James Gilmour]

Kevin Venzke > Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2008 1:06 AM
> > There is a lot of momentum behind IRV.  If we cannot stop
> > it, are there some tweaks that would make it more liveable?
> 
> My idea is to cripple it:
> 
> 1. The voter ranks a first preference and a second 
> preference. No more, and possibly no fewer. 2. Eliminate the 
> 3rd place candidate and transfer preferences to the 1st and 
> 2nd place candidates only. 3. Elect the one of these latter 
> two candidates with more preferences.
> 
> The desired effect is that the top three candidates should 
> become very obvious prior to the vote, so that a "third 
> frontrunner" has the best chance of winning possible, without 
> fear of losing out on lower rankings due to not being as 
> visible as the two stronger frontrunners.
> 
> The main (and most unfair) way this works is by causing you 
> to have wasted your vote when you don't pick one of the top 
> three candidates as your first preference. This creates the 
> incentive for all players to determine in advance which three 
> candidates are viable, and which should drop out to avoid 
> spoiling the outcome.
> 
> Asking (or especially requiring) two preferences hopefully 
> reinforces in the voter's mind that we would appreciate it if 
> he voted for two of the three frontrunners.
> 
> IRV is still not very good at picking a compromise from the 
> three (though these mechanics could be used with other 
> methods instead), but I think the "third" candidate would 
> have something of a better chance due to his status as "one 
> of the three" that can usefully be voted.
> 
> I'm sure this method is unacceptable. But I'm very concerned 
> that even the technically best single-winner methods may be 
> doomed to lead to two-frontrunner elections, unless something 
> is installed to prop up the visibility of a third choice.

Sadly, this method is NOT unacceptable.  This is the method used to elect directly elected mayors in England, including the Mayor of
London.  Here we call it the Supplementary Vote.  Each voter must mark a first choice (one X in the first choice list).  The voter
may mark one second choice (one X in the second choice list).  If no candidate has a majority of the first choice votes, all the
candidates except the top two are excluded and the second choice votes of the excluded candidates are added, but only to one or
other of the top-two  -  all the other second choice votes are discarded and so wasted. 

Sometimes it is fairly obvious who the "top-two" are likely to be, but sometimes it is not  -  then very large numbers of voters
have no say at all in the outcome.  In one such mayoral election (Torbay, 2005) the second round winner was elected with only 29.4%
of all the votes and 43.5% of the second choice votes were discarded.  Even when the likely "top-two" appear obvious, this voting
system has undesirable effects in restraining voter choice.  This is a rotten voting system and should not be recommended for public
or private elections.

James Gilmour

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