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

[James Gilmour]

Kristofer Munsterhjelm  > Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2008 6:54 PM
> I was taking a wider perspective. Consider these two cases for office X:
> 
> A. the people directly elect X using a single-winner method.
> B. the people elect a PR body Y that appoints X, either as its primary 
> duty, or as part of its other duties, where X is responsible to Y 
> ("parliamentarism").
> 
> If we knew that choice A would lead to two-party domination, 
> well, B may suddenly seem a lot more attractive.

These are two very different models of governance and I don't think the electors would decide to change from A to B on the basis
that there might be a theoretical risk of two-party domination no matter what singe-winner voting system was used to elect X to the
single-office.

Given the diversity of local government in the USA I should have thought there was good empirical evidence for electors' reactions
to these different models, taking the "weak mayor", "strong mayor" differences fully into account.  I appreciate that there won't be
good evidence from these elections on the effects of different voting systems in REAL elections because most (all ?) of the directly
elected mayors are elected by FPTP.

James



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