smooth

Where are you getting that the democrat would get 65 votes? That's what I tried pointing out above.


I also want to point out that this example hinges on two unlikely extremes:

1) That all republican votes would shift to the democratic candidate.

2) That the republican candidate would be eliminated in the first round.

Using this example, wherein we only have three candidates to choose from, opponents of IRV are asserting that one of the major parties would be eliminated in the first round. Rather than using an extreme hypothetical, why not use a more realistic example? I believe it's because a more realistic example wouldn't support their oppositions.

What do we really know as of right now: That at least 4 parties are vying for voters: Dem, Rep, Lib, and Green. A massive number of smaller parties exist, and I suspect even more would appear if IRV were allowed (i.e., people could vote their conscious without penalty--as in, they actually want a democrat to win but would be willing to vote for an obscure candidate for ideological reasons).

At the very least, we would suspect that the Green or Libertarian party would be eliminated in the first round. Or one of the major parties, but that doesn't automatically translate to the eliminated votes going to the opposition--as this article seeks to claim without any evidence whatsoever.


So let's try this again with a more realistic appraisal of what would happen in this election cycle:

25% - Dem
30% - Repub
30% - Lib
7-15% - Green

(although both this example and Secret Method's grants huge amounts of voters to the conservative pool without evidence).

Currently, it's projected that libertarians are going to get 1% of the vote, while Cobb will get 1% of the vote. While many people might shift from one of the major parties if IRV were implemented, it seems more likely to me that libertarian voters would come from the conservative pool--I haven't met any democrat or green who would shift to lib.

So where is the evidence that major amounts of people (30+%) would vote lib and that the republicans would still garner 30+% of the popular vote?

I'll stipulate it for the sake of discussion so that we can see how the IRV wouldn't subvert the will of the people even if democrats/greens did shift en masse to the libertarian party.

After the first round, the green party would be eliminated. That leaves the republicans with 30%, plus whatever comes from the green voters (not many I suspect), democrats with a bump and maybe even some new libs after the retally.

Now we are left with the fact that either the libs or one of the major parties are going to be eliminated.

If republicans get eliminated, then the win goes to libs (unless we entertain the idea, which I think is ludicrous, that substantial republicans would vote for kerry wherein the dems win)

If libs get eliminated, then repubs win (unless substantial amounts of first choice libs listed dems as second choice--which would not subvert their will since they originally came from the democratic party unless Secret Method is going to argue that libs and repubs together garner over 60% of the popular vote without pulling from the democratic party. That leaves him with the task of telling us where they are now since repubs currently have roughtly half the vote and libs only have 1%).

If dems get eliminated, we can expect that libs would win--unless substantial numbers of dems listed Bush as their second choice.


In a nutshell, IRV allows people who were previously voting mainstream parties to shif their vote to a less instituted party. Of course, we have to assume they are going to list the mainstream party they used to vote for as their second choice, not the other mainstream party. That is, republicans might be inclined to list Lib --> Repub, but not Lib --> Dem. If their new vote doesn't fly, they fall back on the mainstream party they traditionally voted for.

We can entertain hypotheticals of what might occur if only 3 parties were voteable--but that doesn't amount to much insight since we don't know how people would vote if IRV were in place. The simple solution is to ensure more than three parties are on the ballot, however. Currently, that's not even an issue. A fair appraisal of IRV would take these real factors in account and address them.

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