[EM] In defence of IRV

[Richard Lung]

To all, re KM on STV,

Small districts are in no way integral to STV. Clarence Hoag and George Hallett introduced at large districts to US cities.  New York was at-large STV. That's why it could boast a communist or two, whose main purpose was to uphold the rights of marginalised labor. Hallett made the point that you didn't need primaries with STV because STV secured them (in an at large election).
Cambridge still has an at-large STV 9 member constituency.

The introducing of more than one voting method in any election is a bad idea, because science aspires to one truth, not two. But MMP already is two contradictory methods, both wrong. And two wrongs don't make a right.

Regards,
Richard Lung.





On 15 Nov 2021, at 9:57 pm, Kristofer Munsterhjelm <km_elmet at t-online.de> wrote:

> On 15.11.2021 22:04, Daniel Carrera wrote:
> 
> I've lived in three anglo-saxon countries (Canada, UK, US) and national
> politics are always national. I've never heard of an MP or member of
> congress actually push for a little parochial issue that is specific to
> their particular spot in the country. It all seems to be party-line
> votes regardless. If politicians are going to behave that way, then we
> might as well just have a system with proportional representation. I
> would love to see STV in more places.

I agree. It's not like the US is completely foreign to the concept - New
York used STV to temporarily break the political machine there (until it
struck back and got it repealed by red-baiting).

And I would prefer STV (with single-ticket MMP if that's not too
complex) to party list because STV also allows the voters to express
preferences for factions within a party while these factions are too
small to form parties of their own.

The downside of STV compared to party list is that the relatively small
district sizes reduce party proportionality, which is why it ideally
should have an MMP component (and ideally, the list ticket should be
constructed from the voters' preferences like Schulze's MMP proposal
does). But that might be a little too much to ask for in one go.

-km
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