[EM] IRV vs Plurality

[Kathy Dopp]

2010/1/10 Stéphane Rouillon <stephane.rouillon at sympatico.ca>:
> Abd Ul,
>
> from the data you produce, I agree that for the Burlington election, IRV did
> produce the same result
> FPTP would have produced.

No it did not. FPTP would have produced different voting behavior and
elected the Condorcet winner because voters were fooled into thinking
that IRV allowed them to vote sincerely. A Republican has not won for
Mayor in Burlington for over a decade. Most of the people who
preferred the Republican first would have voted for the Democrat and
only a few hundred of those needed to do so for the Democrat to win.

Plurality is far better than IRV for many many reasons including:

1. preserves the right to cast a vote that always positively affects
the chances of winning of the candidate one votes for

2. allows all voters the right to participate in the final counting
round in the case of top two runoff or primary/general elections

3. preserves voters' right to understandably verify the election
outcomes because the counting is simple enough for them to do,
precinct summable

4. preserves the right for local precinct control of the counts or in
the case of election contests that cross county lines, local county
control of the counting process

5. is far less costly than the IRV counting process

6. fails fewer of Arrow's fairness criteria than IRV/STV does

ETC.
-- 

Kathy Dopp

Town of Colonie, NY 12304
phone 518-952-4030
cell 518-505-0220

http://utahcountvotes.org
http://electionmathematics.org
http://kathydopp.com/serendipity/

Realities Mar Instant Runoff Voting
http://electionmathematics.org/ucvAnalysis/US/RCV-IRV/InstantRunoffVotingFlaws.pdf

Voters Have Reason to Worry
http://utahcountvotes.org/UT/UtahCountVotes-ThadHall-Response.pdf

Checking election outcome accuracy --- Post-election audit sampling
http://electionmathematics.org/em-audits/US/PEAuditSamplingMethods.pdf