[Election-Methods] Dopp: 9.“Could necessitate counting all presidential votes in Washington, D.C.”

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

>9. Dopp: “Could necessitate counting all 
>presidential votes in Washington, D.C.
”
>
>If the Electoral College were abolished and IRV 
>were then adopted for future national popular 
>vote elections for president, there would need 
>to be national coordination of the tally in 
>order to know which candidates got the fewest 
>votes nationwide and needed to be eliminated – 
>just as in Ireland. But the actual counting of 
>ballots does not need to be federalized any more 
>than if IRV was not used, and could be conducted 
>by counties, states or whatever level is easiest 
>and most secure for that jurisdiction. Note that 
>voters certainly would be pleased to have a 
>majority winner in elections for our highest office.

This was not Dopp's strongest argument. However, 
the counting would have to be centrally coordinated.

Now, as to "majority winners." IRV does not find 
majority winners with any reliability. The claim 
that it does is fabricated by redefining majority 
to mean something else than it has always meant:

We have a majority winner when a majority of 
those who voted in an election cast a vote for 
the winner. They get majority winners, 
guaranteed, in Preferential Voting elections in Australia. How do they do it?

They require that all voters fully rank all 
candidates, or the ballot is considered informal 
and is not counted. This is itself a violation of 
standard parliamentary procedure, for standard 
procedure is that a ballot is counted and 
considered a part of the basis for majority as 
long as it is not blank (Robert's Rules) or as 
long as it contains at least one vote for an 
eligible candidate (other parliamentary systems). 
So that a ballot is invalidated when it contains 
a vote for a candidate is a violation of a basic 
principle of democracy. As FairVote knows, 
obligatory full ranking doesn't have a snowball's 
chance of seeing elections in the U.S., no 
proposed implementations are anything other than 
Optional Preferential Voting (except that there, 
full ranking is still possible, in most 
applications here, ranks are limited so exhausted 
ballots are necessary for some sincere voters.)

And as the Australians know, once you have 
ranking optional, you can get majority failure, 
and, apparently, it is common and becoming even 
more common, as rates of "plumping" (voting for 
one only) are said to be increasing, see 
http://www.abc.net.au/elections/federal/2004/items/200407/s1162263.htm, 
which describes the political effect of Optional 
Preferential Voting, which confirms much of what 
I've said elsewhere in this set of articles.

The only method being used anywhere in public 
elections that guarantees a majority winner is 
real runoff voting. Top-Two Runoff suffers from 
some of the same problems as IRV, it might seem: 
it could fail to find a compromise winner. 
However, most implementations of TTR allow 
write-in votes, so TTR, in theory, is more 
flexible than one might think. Nevertheless, TTR 
always, in practice, finds majority winners. 
That's why it's used! The major objection to it 
is cost, yet IRV can be so expensive to count 
that it's a poor solution to the cost problem. In 
any case, the Vermont legislature, in the 
preamble to its recent -- and recently vetoed -- IRV legislation, had this:

>(1)  The principle of majority rule is 
>fundamental to the concept of democracy.  When 
>possible, election laws should be structured to 
>uphold and facilitate this basic principle.
>
>(2)  In a multicandidate race, when no candidate 
>receives a majority, the candidate with the most 
>votes (the plurality) may actually be the 
>candidate most opposed by the majority of voters.
>
>...
>(7)  It would be desirable, and there is a 
>popular preference, to have a direct popular 
>election by majority vote in all elections for 
>the offices of U.S. senator and U.S. representative.
>
>(8)  A voting system known as “preferential 
>voting” in Robert’s Rules of Order Newly 
>Revised, and popularly known as “instant runoff 
>voting,” which has been used for governmental 
>elections for over 80 years in Australia, as 
>well as in the Republic of Ireland, can fulfill 
>these goals of majority rule, with direct popular election.

The only problem with this preamble is the last 
point. IRV cannot fulfill the goal of majority 
rule. It does move some elections toward it. It 
does better than Plurality. But it does not do 
better than Top-Two Runoff, which *always* -- in 
practice -- results in a true majority winner.

FairVote activists, confronted with this, will 
claim that Top-Two Runoff is not fair because 
turnout is lower, often, in runoffs. (It is not 
necessarily true that turnout is lower. Sometimes 
it is higher, it depends on conditions. In some 
places the primary is, say, in October, with the 
runoff, if needed, being with the general 
November election. There, turnout tends to be level.)

However, it is a long established practice in 
democracy that election decisions are made by 
those who vote in the election. If an election is 
properly held, the turnout isn't relevant, unless 
there is some quorum requirement. What has often 
been overlooked by those deploring low turnout is 
that low turnout can reflect two conditions, but 
summarized by indifference. The voters may be 
indifferent in a top-two runoff because they 
think both candidates are fine, so they will 
accept either outcome, or they may think both 
candidates are terrible, so they also don't 
bother to vote. However, if they truly think both 
candidates are terrible, if something went wrong 
with the primary, and they organize themselves to 
vote, they could write in any eligible candidate 
they choose, including an eliminated candidate from the primary.

Top-two runoff satisfies the conditions that the 
Vermont legislature thought important, and IRV does not.

That legislation, had it not been vetoed, would 
probably have been found unconstitutional in 
Vermont, because the Vermont Constitution has a 
majority election requirement for some offices, 
and I very much doubt that the Vermont Supreme 
Court would accept the weaseling interpretations 
that a last round majority, ignoring exhausted 
ballots, is a true majority as required.

I've pointed out that we could satisfy a 
unanimity requirement, easily, if that interpretation is allowed.

Just think about it, wouldn't it be desirable to 
have unanimous elections. Well, for the minor 
cost of a very complicated counting process, you 
can have it! Just use IRV and continue the 
elimination one more step, until all votes are 
for one candidate. If that is not unanimity, why 
is the step before it majority?

Answer: it isn't.

Continued with:
Dopp: 10. “IRV entrenches the two-major-political party system 
”