[EM] IRV in Burlington VT

[Warren Smith]

See this report on the Burlington 2009 IRV pathologies:

http://rangevoting.org/Burlington.html

one of the co-authors, Anthony Gierzynski,
is a UVM professor who lives in Burlington.

The report refutes a lot of lies commonly told about IRV,
and concludes that this election
"singled out IRV & plurality as nearly-uniquely bad performers [among all
commonly-proposed election methods]."

Given this experience, I would suggest that Burlington switch to a
method different from plurality and different from IRV.   Some obvious
contenders
are approval and range voting.  The difficulty is, that due to the
fact that the world
in general and Burlington in particular, is inhabited by morons, the ballot
issue probably is going to consist of exactly of the two worst
choices "(a) IRV or (b) go back to plurality?"
with no third choice being offered.  Furthermore, without a decent
voting system,
even HAVING an election with 3 or more choices, is rendered dubious and risky.

Ludicrous, isn't it?

Let me drive it home with an analogous and equivalent scenario.
1. voters decide to replace "trials in which your guilt or innocence
is decided by flipping a coin" with "summary executions without trial"
in order to save money.
2. It works out badly.
3. A referendum is proposed to a switch back to the old system.
4. Everybody is told "look, the DEMOCRATIC PROCESS decided to go with
either (a) or (b), therefore this must be the best of all possible
worlds, so quit
complaining because plainly no improvement is possible over our fine
system of justice."

How many years must be wasted on this nonsense?  How many lives?

-- 
Warren D. Smith
http://RangeVoting.org  <-- add your endorsement (by clicking
"endorse" as 1st step)
and
math.temple.edu/~wds/homepage/works.html