[Election-Methods] Dopp: 10. “IRV entrenches the two-major-political party system ”

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

>10. Dopp: “IRV entrenches the two-major-political party system 
”
>
>IRV neither "entrenches" nor "overthrows" the 
>two-party system. It simply ensures no candidate 
>wins over majority opposition. If a minor party 
>has the support to earn a majority of vote, it 
>can win in an IRV election. If not, it will not win.

This is pure smokescreen. Sure, it doesn't 
*guarantee* a two-party system. It merely makes 
its continuation highly likely. That's what Dopp 
meant by "entrenches." IRV has no record of 
assisting in the overturning of a two-party 
system, but there is an obvious way in which it helps maintain it.

It eliminates the first-order spoiler effect. 
Major parties can then, with less risk, ignore minor parties.

Whatever the mechanism, that's what seems to 
happen. See the description of OPV at:
http://www.abc.net.au/elections/federal/2004/items/200407/s1162263.htm

This is Antony Green of ABC writing about Optional Preferential Vote:
"In almost every case, optional preferential 
voting will assist the candidate with the highest 
primary vote." In other words, OPV will behave 
like Plurality, most of the time. And Plurality 
is well-known to strongly favor two-party systems.

>IRV is a winner-take-all method, like plurality 
>voting and two-round runoffs. However, IRV 
>allows independents and candidates with minor 
>parties to run without being labeled as spoilers.

Same as two-round runoffs. However, runoffs have 
surprises, quite often (about one-third the 
time). With IRV, that is much more rare.

With top-two runoff, a third party only has to 
muscle its way up to second place to make it into 
the runoff, not all the way to the top. Suddenly 
it has credibility for that election. If I were 
involved with a third party, I'd want to see 
Top-Two runoff, real runoffs, not IRV, which 
gives me almost no chance to convince the pubic 
that my party is viable. Robert's Rules of Order 
deplores the characteristic of collapsing an 
election into one ballot, with no runoff 
possibility, precisely because it doesn't allow 
the extra consideration that repeated balloting 
does. Given that in most systems, the lower 
preference candidates are not actually 
eliminated, it is simply "suggested" that voters 
pick one of the top two -- because that's all 
that is on the ballot -- Top Two runoff, with 
write-in votes allowed, actually fulfils the 
Robert's Rules preference for repeated balloting, 
particular if a majority remains required.

>This may reveal a higher level of support for 
>these parties, and if these parties are 
>attractive to voters, their support may grow.

Apparently it doesn't work that way.

>Relating to multi-party representation, any 
>winner-take-all, single seat election method 
>tends towards two dominant parties, at least in 
>any given geographic area. To allow for multiple 
>parties to regularly win office, jurisdictions 
>should adopt a form of proportional 
>representation in which candidates will be able 
>to win office with less than 50% of the vote.

Actually, want to go whole hog, use Asset Voting, 
first proposed by Lewis Carroll in 1884. He 
proposed it, actually, for proportional 
representation using STV. And exhausted ballots? 
Well, he wrote, a voter who wasn't familiar with 
all the candidates could choose to vote for just 
one, and then this candidate could "spend" these 
votes to create seats, as if it were his own 
property. Warren Smith, proposing Asset Voting in 
2004, used the same metaphor, the votes are the candidate's "Assets."

But Asset Voting also works if the ballot is a 
standard vote-for-one ballot, or an Approval 
ballot (if it is Approval, because no votes are 
wasted, votes for more than one must be divided 
or else the voter would get more than one vote of 
effect on the election, and that's more 
complicated to count.) And then the Assembly is 
composed of all candidates who get a quota of 
votes, either directly or through vote transfers 
controlled by the candidates. Very, very simple, 
and thoroughly, intensely democratic. But this is for another day.

STV is quite a respectable method for 
proportional representation, it is only when it 
is used single-winner that it becomes seriously 
problematic. There are better methods, though, 
that are precinct-summable, much simpler to count.

>Note that Australia’s IRV elections are often 
>cited as an example of two-party domination. But 
>while the two major parties (one of which is 
>divided into two parties, with one party running 
>in one particular region of the country) 
>dominant representation, the minor parties 
>contest elections very vigorously, with an 
>average of seven candidates contesting house 
>elections in 2007. That year the Green Party did 
>not win any seats in house elections, but it ran 
>candidates in every district and earned 8% of 
>the national vote. It naturally would prefer a 
>proportional representation system, but supports 
>IRV over alternate winner-take-all systems and 
>uses it to elect its internal leaders.

Could it be that it supports IRV against its own 
interests? Notice that it isn't winning any 
seats. What does that say? It says to me that IRV 
makes them irrelevant. With a plurality system, 
for example -- which I don't recommend -- and 8% 
of the vote, they'd have serious clout. With IRV, they are defanged.

Continued with:
Dopp: 11. "Could deliver unreasonable outcomes
."