[Election-Methods] RELEASE: Instant Runoff Voting

[Aaron Armitage]

--- On Sun, 7/27/08, Terry Bouricius <terryb at burlingtontelecom.net> wrote:

> From: Terry Bouricius <terryb at burlingtontelecom.net>
> Subject: Re: [Election-Methods] RELEASE: Instant Runoff Voting
> To: election-methods at lists.electorama.com
> Date: Sunday, July 27, 2008, 3:32 PM
> Different election methods provide different incentives to 
> candidates...Under IRV, or two-round runoff, a candidate
> who is nobody's 
> first choice cannot win (they will be eliminated) even if
> this candidate 
> would be a good compromise (or merely an inoffensive
> candidate avoiding 
> all controversial issues), whereas under Condorcet or Borda
> (for example) 
> a candidate who is nobody's first choice CAN win. Thus
> IRV prompts 
> candidates to "stand-out" enough to win a lot of
> FIRST choices and reach 
> out for second choices as well, while that strategy of
> stressing first 
> choices may hurt the candidate under Condorcet or Borda.
> IRV advocates 
> argue (rightly, I think) that it strikes a favorable
> balance between 
> seeking first choices ("core" support) and
> alternate rankings ("broad" 
> support), when compared to methods that disregard whether a
> candidate 
> received any first preferences.
> 

Why are you assuming that standing out means taking clear policy positions? It could just as easy mean running more ads than anyone else or having a more telegenic family or a more famous name. There are a lot of voters who base their first, not their later, preferences on just those things, and we know that because they're often enough to carry a plurality election which only considers first preferences. For that matter, "core support" could mean nothing more than coming second to last all the way to the end. That's unlikely, but no more unlikely than a candidate with no first-place support running a campaign strong enough to make him a Condorcet winner.

Regardless of whether voters are making a good choice, if a majority favors one candidate over another, none of us, FairVote included, are qualified to tell it that it must take the candidate it voted AGAINST just to satisfy some airy theoretical concern about having the "right" amount of first-place support, as if we could even tell what that is. It's especially senseless when the people who advocate setting aside a majority vote to satisfy their theories will turn around and act like populists attacking the ivory tower when anyone brings up theoretical criteria that actually make sense.