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

[Juho Laatu]

In general I tend to agree that IRV and TTR do elect
reasonable candidates most of the time. Condorcet has
a problem since there have been only few major real
life elections and therefore there is no good data
available.

A good alternative to actual election data is always
also credible real-life like examples. That means that
one should estimate the probability of the set-up
(sincere opinions), required number of strategically
minded voters, probability of voters identifying the
strategy, need to coordinate the strategy, risk of
other strategies, risk of backfiring strategies, risk
of inaccurate polls, risk or changing opinions, risk
of losing votes due to plotting etc.

Juho



--- On Tue, 25/11/08, Greg <greg at somervilleirv.org> wrote:

> From: Greg <greg at somervilleirv.org>
> Subject: Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative
> To: election-methods at lists.electorama.com
> Date: Tuesday, 25 November, 2008, 6:52 PM
> > Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 09:16:34 -0500
> > From: Brian Olson <bql at bolson.org>
> > Subject: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious
> alternative
> >
> > There's been a lot of discussion lately started by
> people who advocate
> > IRV. I'm mystified. Really? You really think IRV
> is a good system?
> > I've spent so long considering it to be pretty
> much junk that I really
> > am confused by that position. Here's my summary of
> why I think IRV is
> > junk.
> >
> > (from http://bolson.org/voting/irv/ )
> 
> I will believe that when I'm presented with a
> non-negligible number of
> actual IRV elections for public office that failed to elect
> the
> "right" winner. And for starters, you get to
> define what "right" is.
> Preferably something of the form: in Election X, IRV
> elected candidate
> Y but candidate Z was the right winner, because of [insert
> your
> criteria and evidence here]. The more such cases you have,
> the more
> convincing your argument. I've studied every IRV
> election for public
> office ever held in the United States, most of which have
> their full
> ranking data publicly available, and every single time IRV
> elected the
> Condorcet winner, something I consider to be a good, though
> not
> perfect, rule of thumb for determining the
> "right" winner. When you
> present a case in which IRV did not elect the right winner,
> maybe I'll
> agree or maybe I'll dispute your criteria, but at least
> then we'd be
> off the blackboard and into the world of real elections.
> 
> Greg
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