<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt"><DIV>Kathy,<BR>"Could someone please point me to a fairly simple (if possible) example<BR>of the nonmonotonicity feature of IRV elections where adding say two<BR>more votes for candidate A causes candidate A to lose whereas<BR>candidate A would have won the election without the addition of the<BR>two more first choice votes?"</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>No-one can point you to such an example because IRV meets </DIV>
<DIV>"Mono-add-Top", which says that candidate X can never be harmed by</DIV>
<DIV>adding some ballots that top-rank X.<BR><BR><A href="http://nodesiege.tripod.com/elections/#critmatop">http://nodesiege.tripod.com/elections/#critmatop</A><BR></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>"Someone called me today and pointed out in a way that it finally sunk<BR>in how awful it is that voters can actually cause their own first<BR>choice candidate to LOSE by casting votes for their first choice<BR>candidate in IRV elections."</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Unfortunately it is true that a subset of voters can make their sincere</DIV>
<DIV>first choice X lose by by top-ranking X *instead of top-ranking some</DIV>
<DIV>other candidate Y*, but NOT by top-ranking X instead of staying home.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I can report that the "awfulness" of the situation apparently registers with</DIV>
<DIV>no-one in Australia. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>In Appendix E of your anti-IRV paper you list "Top-Two Runoff election"</DIV>
<DIV>as one of the "voting methods worth considering". It of course has the same</DIV>
<DIV>problem.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><BR>Chris Benham<BR><BR></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><BR>Kathy Dopp wrote (Wed.,Aug 6):</DIV>
<DIV>Someone called me today and pointed out in a way that it finally sunk<BR>in how awful it is that voters can actually cause their own first<BR>choice candidate to LOSE by casting votes for their first choice<BR>candidate in IRV elections.<BR><BR>Could someone please point me to a fairly simple (if possible) example<BR>of the nonmonotonicity feature of IRV elections where adding say two<BR>more votes for candidate A causes candidate A to lose whereas<BR>candidate A would have won the election without the addition of the<BR>two more first choice votes?<BR><BR>I find it absolutely astounding now that I think about it, that anyone<BR>could support a method where the voters going to the polls cannot know<BR>if their first choice votes for a candidate would hurt or help their<BR>candidate!<BR><BR>Thanks.<BR><BR>Pretty soon, if I find one more flaw of IRV, I'm going to have to<BR>revise the title of the paper to "20 flaws & 3 benefits of
IRV..."<BR><BR>-- <BR><BR>Kathy Dopp<BR><BR></DIV></div><br>
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