[EM] David, re: IRV. Chris, re: IRV

MIKE OSSIPOFF nkklrp at hotmail.com
Mon Dec 5 10:36:31 PST 2011



David said:

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change [two-party
dominated system in US]

[endquote]

How right David is: With IRV, two-party domination in the U.S. will always
be with us.

My subject-line didn't say everything it should have: 

IRV is for when there's two-party dominance, and when you want to keep it that way.

David continues:

and the courage to change the things I can change [rallying support of
others around American forms of PR + IRV]

[endquote]

Yes, the FairVote people sometimes admit that IRV is really just a way
to get their foot in the door for STV. That explains why they're so
busily promoting such a poor single-winner method. 

And yes, pretty much
everyone other than them, after taking a look at the subject, agrees that
IRV is a poor choice. Even the recommendations document discussed here last
month expresses reservations about IRV.

Chris:

By "counted", I mean not ignored by the count. I mean "used in the calculation
or procedure that determines the winner". There's something wrong with not
looking at all of the voted information.

Approval lets you choose what set of candidates you want to vote over the rest,
with the full assurance that those preferences will be counted. In that way,
Approval is much more powerful and responsive than IRV.

I have nothing against your suggestion of a ballot consisting of an Approval vote,
which decides the winner, and a pairwise-count balloting for informational purposes.

Note that we've been doing informational pairwise-count balloting on the Internet.
Ralph Nader pretty much won every time. What does that inform us of? It tells us that
most likely the CW would be a progressive. The favorite-count median on the
political spectrum is in the progressive region, more progressive than the
Democrats.

Before you bring up voter-selection bias, I remind you that I've answered that objection
in a previous posting about those polls. I'll repeat it if you want.

Of course, for finer resolution, it would be desirable to hold _new_ pairwise-count
presidential polls, among the 2012 candidates.  --to find out _which_ progressive is
the one that progressives should give our single Plurality vote to.

So yes, I'm very much in favor of informational pairwise-count balloting. It would
be great if it were included along with the winner-choosing Approval ballot.

...Or if it were included along with the 3-slot ballot of MTA, MDDTR, 3-slot MMPO,
MMT, or Forest's similiar recent proposal.

Mike Ossipoff






 		 	   		  
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