[EM] Request for help: List of Pathological Elections

[robert bristow-johnson]

It is my opinion that "Plurality" and "First-Past-The-Post" are synonymous.

But looking at your Wiki page, I am concerned in how you would ever know for certain an election is spoiled with FPTP.  I mean, like Florida 2000, perhaps the Ralph Nader voters would have split even up between George W Bush and Al Gore.  Not likely, but we don't know without the ranked ballot.

But for the RCV elections in which the Condorcet Winner is not elected (whether the CW exists or not), we *know* from the ranked ballot data that the election was spoiled and we know exactly how.

But we can't know it with FPTP without speculating how voters for the ostensible spoiler would have voted had their candidate not run.

BTW don't let FairVote mislead you about "redefining" the spoiler effect.  A "spoiler" is a candidate who loses an election but, simply because of they were a candidate in the election, they materially change the winner of the election.  Burlington 2009 and Alaska August 2022 and Minneapolis Ward 2 in 2021 and Oakland School Bard District 4 in 2022 were all objectively spoiled elections because the Condorcet Winner was not elected.  But in the latter two, there was no CW and, in the cycle, the spoiler is always the candidate that winner would defeat in a head-to-head runoff.

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r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj at audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

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