[EM] Why IRV has been "successful"

[Warren Smith]

>Bob Richard <lists001 <at> robertjrichard.com>
>Subject: Re: Learning from IRV's success
>It turns that real live voters (including real live politicians) care a lot about the later-no-harm >criterion, even if they don't know what it's called.
>--Bob Richard

--I think that's bullshit.  IRV got "successful" i.e. was adopted in
Australia, Ireland, etc in
the early 1900s, before "later no harm" was even thought of.
Obviously, nobody gave a hoot about it at the time IRV achieved its
success.   There have been tiny later successes of IRV after the early
1900s but they were small by comparison.   The people doing that then
tried to invent LNH as a post-rationalization and desperate
baloney-argument for why IRV was a great voting method, since it as
very hard to think of good reasons IRV was a good voting method.

The reason for IRV's success is simple: its proponents were in the
right place at the right time early, and very few other voting methods
had even been thought of so it had
little competition.   In other words, it's largely an accident.

One might also ask "why has range voting been so successful?"  Range
voting was adopted in two of the earliest and most successful
partial-democracies, ancient Sparta and Renaissance Venice.   Those
both lasted far longer and under tougher circumstances than any IRV
country.  Indeed, it could be argued these were the two most
successful democracies of all time.   So Range Voting was a great
success.  Why was that?

Well... as far as why Sp. & Ve. adopted range voting, this is unknown,
the story of how that
decision got made is basically lost to history (and/or largely
mythologized).  It is suspected
that the reason the Catholic Popes were elected by an
approval-voting-like process
for several centuries was because the pope (Celestine V) who started
that system knew about the Venetian system and knew it was successful.
  So at least in that case, we have a
good idea why it happened.   I have tried in my limited manner to examine the
Pope Elections in this era and it appears their approval-like system
worked pretty well for them despite immense pressures placed upon it;
and it also appears IRV would not have worked well for them and
probably would have turned the papacy into a permanent family dynasty
and then there would have been (more) wars...

http://www.rangevoting.org/SpartaExec.html
http://www.rangevoting.org/VeniceExec.html
http://www.rangevoting.org/PopeSummary.html
http://www.rangevoting.org/PopeApprovalSystem.html


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