[EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative

[James Gilmour]

Kristofer Munsterhjelm  > Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2008 6:27 PM
> It suggests more than this. If all Condorcet single-round single-winner 
> methods strengthen the duopoly, then the important single-winner 
> elections should either be made multiple-round (that is, have runoffs), 
> or be subordinated to the multiwinner method by some analog of 
> parliamentarism.

So far as genuine single-office single-winner elections are concerned, I doubt very much if the all the costs involved in any form
of run-off elections could be justified in comparison with the results that would be obtained by IRV or Condorcet in real elections.
The Australian use of IRV to elect the members of the Federal House of Representatives should NOT be used as examples because those
are not genuine single-office elections.  That use of IRV is a misuse of the IRV voting system.  The Australian House of
Representatives should be elected by a PR voting system.

I don't understand what the second part of the last sentence of your paragraph means.  If you have a directly elected city mayor,
you have a directly elected city mayor ,and so you have a single-office single-winner election.  If you want to change the system of
city government from directly elected mayor to an appropriate application of "parliamentarianism", that's a quite separate matter.
Such a decision should most certainly not, in my opinion, be based on any presumed defect of a genuine single-office single-winner
voting system.

James

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