[EM] In defense of the Electoral College (was Re: Making a Bad

[Greg]

> I.e. IRV would necessitate that the federal government be responsible
> for counting all the nation's ballots if IRV were used to elect the
> President - so we can expect all IRV/STV proponents to oppose national
> popular vote for president.

That is incorrect. IRV need only be centrally *coordinated*, not
centrally counted. As they do in Australia, each state counts and
publicly reports its first choice totals for each candidate. If any
candidate has a majority of the first choices, then that candidate
wins and the election is over. If no candidate has a majority, the
federal government would direct the states which candidates to
eliminate. The formula for determining those candidates is public
knowledge, as are the first choice tallies obviously, so there's no
concern the federal government would give the states an inaccurate set
of candidates to eliminate. The states then count the ballots for the
eliminated candidates and report their new tallies. The process
continues until a candidate has a majority. The states do the counting
themselves, and they can delegate to individual counties or cities and
towns if they wish.

Here's my preference order:

IRV > NPV with top-two runoff > NPV > Electoral College

Greg