[EM] Does IRV elect "majority winners?"

[Juho Laatu]

--- On Tue, 6/1/09, Kathy Dopp <kathy.dopp at gmail.com> wrote:

> > From: Juho Laatu <juho4880 at yahoo.co.uk>
> 
> > How should we see other methods like Range
> > and Condorcet in this light?
> 
> That is not a valid comparison because, unlike IRV/STV,
> both Range and
> Condorcet methods consider *all* rankings or ratings that
> *all* voters
> make on their ballots.

I think this is a different problem of IRV.
In the last round the exhausted ballots have
already been fully considered, and the
remaining ballots that have not been
considered fully can no more change the
result since there are too few of them. The
problem of not considering the votes occurs
already earlier where some good candidates
may be eliminated early.

> 
> IRV/STV cannot claim majority winners, not only because
> ballots are
> exhausted and not considered in the final counting round,
> but also
> because not all voters' choices are even fairly and
> equally considered
> during the counting process - thus resulting in winners who
> are
> disliked by a majority of voters and overlooking candidates
> who are
> preferred by a majority of voters casting votes in the
> contest.

There are two questions
- majority at the last round
- majority in the whole election

I guess you are here talking more about
the whole election. Direct claim (without
additional explanations) that IRV elects
"THE majority winner" would at least be
quite confusing ("a majority winner" would
be closer to the truth since IRV winner
wins at least one of the others).

> 
> Abd ul is right that Top two runoff is a lot better system,
> and TTR is
> most likely less costly, definitely is easier to count and
> more
> auditable, is fairer, and both elections are monotonic too.

I think there are good and bad points.

Juho


> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Kathy
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