[EM] Burlington VT reconsidering IRV 10 years after IRV failed to elect the Condorcet Winner

[Markus Schulze]

Dear Robert Bristow-Johnson,

the best possible election method according to the
underlying heuristic of instant-runoff voting will
always be instant-runoff voting. Therefore, I don't
think that any supporter of instant-runoff voting
will be convinced by a hybrid of Condorcet voting
and instant-runoff voting.

Bottom-two runoff violates monotonicity and reversal
symmetry. Therefore, when you promote bottom-two
runoff, you cannot use these criteria against
instant-runoff voting.

Bottom-two runoff violates independence of clones
while instant-runoff voting satisfies independence
of clones. Therefore, this criterion will be used
against bottom-two runoff.

When you promote bottom-two runoff and fail to
convince the audience about the importance of the
Condorcet criterion, you don't have any arguments
anymore against instant-runoff.

I strongly recommend that you should promote the
Schulze method because of the following reasons:

(1) The Schulze method satisfies not only the
Condorcet criterion, but also monotonicity,
reversal symmetry, independence of clones and many
other criteria. Therefore, the Schulze method is a
very good method even when there is no Condorcet
winner or when you fail to convince the audience
about the importance of the Condorcet criterion.

(2) The Schulze method is currently the most
wide-spread Condorcet method.

(3) The Schulze method has been published in an
important peer-reviewed journal:

    Markus Schulze, "A new monotonic, clone-independent,
    reversal symmetric, and Condorcet-consistent
    single-winner election method", Social Choice and
    Welfare, volume 36, issue 2, pages 267-303, 2011,
    DOI: 10.1007/s00355-010-0475-4

Here are some useful links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method

https://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/Committee/421/ERRE/Brief/BR8397842/br-external/SchulzeMarkus-e.pdf

Markus Schulze