[EM] More non-altruistic attacks on IRV usage.

[Richard Fobes]

On 11/22/2011 1:03 PM, David L Wetzell wrote:
> dlw: All analysis shows that the perceived problems with IRV are
> seriously attenuated with only 3 candidates.  This is why it's a shame
> not to add IRV3/AV3 to the list of endorsed methods, since it always
> uses IRV with only 3 candidates and addresses other concerns like
> precinct summarizability.

If IRV3/AV is a round of Approval counting followed by a round of IRV 
among the top three choices, then the declaration already covers that 
situation.  Note that the section about rounds of voting (which Peter 
Zbornik wisely requested restoring) allows for this combination.

In this case, you are mainly saying that IRV works well when there are 
only three choices, and that's something you can state in your signature.

Note that all methods produce fewer surprise results when there are 
fewer choices.  Going from the two-choice limit of plurality voting to 
the three-choice limit of IRV doesn't seem like the big improvement we 
want to support.

According to some IRV proponents, the more IRV is used, the more choices 
it fosters.  Yet you are saying that too many choices leads to its 
weakness of only handling three choice fairly.  That combination of 
benefits doesn't seem like a good strategy for promoting IRV.

If my understanding of IRV3/AV is mistaken, please give me the "elevator 
pitch" explanation -- I haven't had time to follow lots of details on 
all the discussions here.  Such an explanation would also be needed if 
the method is marketable.

Another thought: Simplicity is an important advantage of IRV, and I 
wonder if that is lost when methods are combined.

I'm not yet seeing anything that the declaration doesn't already say 
that needs to be said.  You may regard this perspective as biased, but 
as you have also said, public criticism of election methods tends to be 
quite rigorous, perhaps even more rigorous than the criticisms here.

Richard Fobes