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

[fsimmons at pcc.edu]

> From: Chris Benham > > Forest,> Given IRV's compliance with the "representativeness criteria" > Mutual Dominant Third, Majority for> Solid Coalitions, Condorcet Loser and? Plurality; why should the > bad look of its "erratic behaviour"> be sufficient to condemn IRV in spite of these and other > positive criterion compliances such as> Later-no-Harm and? Burial Invulnerability?A picture is worth a thousand words.  It shows the actual behavior, including the extent of the pathology.> > "....in the best of all possible worlds, namely normally > distributed voting populations in no more > than two dimensional issue space."> > Why does that situation you refer to qualify as "the best of all > possible worlds" ?> Three points determine a plane, so we cannot expect a lower dimension than two. What nicer distribution can you think of. than normal?  But any distribution whose density only depends on distance from the center of the distribution would give exactly the same results for any Condorcet method, without making the IRV results any nicer. Forest 
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