[EM] Does IRV elect "majority winners?"

[Kathy Dopp]

> From: "Terry Bouricius" <terryb at burlingtontelecom.net>
> Subject: Re: [EM] Does IRV elect "majority winners?"

> Since the two-round runoff election system widely used in the U.S. that involves counting votes in two rounds is said to always elect a "majority winner," meaning a majority of votes from those voters who chose to express a preference between the two candidates who made it into the final runoff, then by the identical logic, an IRV winner is also a "majority winner"

Terry,

That is very convoluted logic, but I suppose it works as long as you
ignore obvious facts including:

1. that voters in an one-election IRV contest cannot know for certain
in advance who will be in the final IRV counting round (unless you
imagine that all voters are psychic and can know how all other voters
will vote) - so voters are not given the choice to participate in the
final IRV counting round, they are arbitrarily excluded from
participation depending on how other voters vote, and

2. that *all* voters in two election runoff election do participate in
the final counting round.

Terry, this is a very slick way to justify mislead people on the facts
by ignoring obvious factual differences between a one election IRV
scenario versus a two-election top-two runoff scenario.

Not surprising though.

Kathy