[EM] IRV vs Plurality (Dave Ketchum)

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 11:34 PM 1/15/2010, Jonathan Lundell wrote:
>On Jan 15, 2010, at 7:51 PM, Kathy Dopp wrote:
>
> > Imagine sending all your ballots nationwide to DC for manual counting
> > to check the outcome of a Presidential election. We'll simply let the
> > GW administration, for instance, count the results in his own IRV
> > election!
>
>That's something of a non sequitur. Anyone with all the ballot files 
>(every state, for example, or anyone else) could do the count.

It may depends on what office(s) are being elected. States are free, 
supposedly, to select their electors by any method they choose. STV 
is actually a decent method for that. This election would be 
state-wide. But it ain't gonna happen unless some negotations and 
arrangements are successful. There is a way to get from here to 
there, but it must address the problem that the majority party in 
each state will see that the all-or-nothing assignment of electors 
state by state helps it, and that this is somewhat balanced and 
somewhat fair when disparity, the loss of representation in the 
electoral college by all-or-nothing, balances out.

So a Democratic state, for example, if it decides to generously 
divide up its electors fairly, will quite accurately perceive that it 
will be helping the Republican to win, and perhaps unfairly, if there 
is no reciprocation. There is a way around this through conditional 
implementations that only divide the electors when this actually will 
produce a fair result based on overall proportional representation in 
the electoral college. Otherwise it reverts to all-or-nothing, or 
something in between.

I strongly dislike basing the national result on direct popular vote, 
for two reasons, one of which is the election integrity problem.

Ideally, the electoral college would return to its intended role, 
where electors could cast their votes *independently,* and were 
elected based on the trust of the public in them *personally*. If you 
want to only vote for a Green elector, fine. But let your elector 
cast his or her vote in the College according to what will produce 
the best result in the end, as seen by that person. Choose well.

Part of the problem with the present system is that we are electing 
rubber-stamps, then we are surprised when rubber-stamp elections don't go well!