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<pre><br>David said:<br><br>Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change [two-party<br>dominated system in US]<br><br>[endquote]<br><br>How right David is: With IRV, two-party domination in the U.S. will always<br>be with us.<br><br>My subject-line didn't say everything it should have: <br><br>IRV is for when there's two-party dominance, and when you want to keep it that way.<br><br>David continues:<br><br>and the courage to change the things I can change [rallying support of<br>others around American forms of PR + IRV]<br><br>[endquote]<br><br>Yes, the FairVote people sometimes admit that IRV is really just a way<br>to get their foot in the door for STV. That explains why they're so<br>busily promoting such a poor single-winner method. <br><br>And yes, pretty much<br>everyone other than them, after taking a look at the subject, agrees that<br>IRV is a poor choice. Even the recommendations document discussed here last<br>month expresses reservations about IRV.<br><br>Chris:<br><br>By "counted", I mean not ignored by the count. I mean "used in the calculation<br>or procedure that determines the winner". There's something wrong with not<br>looking at all of the voted information.<br><br>Approval lets you choose what set of candidates you want to vote over the rest,<br>with the full assurance that those preferences will be counted. In that way,<br>Approval is much more powerful and responsive than IRV.<br><br>I have nothing against your suggestion of a ballot consisting of an Approval vote,<br>which decides the winner, and a pairwise-count balloting for informational purposes.<br><br>Note that we've been doing informational pairwise-count balloting on the Internet.<br>Ralph Nader pretty much won every time. What does that inform us of? It tells us that<br>most likely the CW would be a progressive. The favorite-count median on the<br>political spectrum is in the progressive region, more progressive than the<br>Democrats.<br><br>Before you bring up voter-selection bias, I remind you that I've answered that objection<br>in a previous posting about those polls. I'll repeat it if you want.<br><br>Of course, for finer resolution, it would be desirable to hold _new_ pairwise-count<br>presidential polls, among the 2012 candidates. --to find out _which_ progressive is<br>the one that progressives should give our single Plurality vote to.<br><br>So yes, I'm very much in favor of informational pairwise-count balloting. It would<br>be great if it were included along with the winner-choosing Approval ballot.<br><br>...Or if it were included along with the 3-slot ballot of MTA, MDDTR, 3-slot MMPO,<br>MMT, or Forest's similiar recent proposal.<br><br>Mike Ossipoff<br><br><br><br><br><br><br></pre> </div></body>
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