[EM] Why is wikipedia so biased pro-IRV?

[robert bristow-johnson]

On Feb 24, 2011, at 9:43 PM, Kevin Venzke wrote:
>
> I don't think IRV opponents will criticize that IRV is vulnerable to  
> strategic voting.

this "opponent" does.  (quotes used because i voted to retain IRV in  
Burlington VT last year.)

IRV did not eliminate the burden of strategic voting, but it merely  
transferred the burden from the majority block (in Burlington, that  
would be Liberals) to the minority block (the Conservatives).  in the  
2009 election, there were 1513 "GOP Prog-haters" that found out after  
the election that if 429 of them had understood that their guy wasn't  
going to win, if just 429 of them had insincerely bumped up their 2nd  
choice over their sincere 1st choice, they could have prevented their  
least favorite candidate from winning (and their 2nd choice would have  
won).  now, if IRV had survived to the next election, what would these  
conservative voters be thinking in the polls?  "In this liberal town,  
I gotta choose between Liberal and More Liberal, because if I vote for  
the guy I really like, More Liberal gets elected."  That is vulnerable  
to strategic voting and the strategy is called "compromising".

> Or else IRV opponents can criticize non-monotonicity or other  
> things. But, I don't usually see people argue that non-monotonicity  
> will be exploited by strategic voters.


it's pretty hard to exploit safely, but we also found out that the  
Burlington mayoral election in 2009 (using IRV) was not monotonic  
either.  the Prog candidate won the IRV election and if about 745 of  
these GOP voters had changed their mind and vote from the GOP  
candidate (as their 1st choice) to the Prog candidate, that would have  
caused the Prog to lose.  that is clearly non-monotonic.

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r b-j                  rbj at audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."