British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has announced that he wants a national referendum on whether the United Kingdom should use Instant Runoff Voting in its parliamentary elections. The British term is the “Alternative Vote.” See this story. Thanks to Jonathan Lundell for the link.
Proportional Representation is used in most of the CIVILIZED world — excluding the EVIL minority rule gerrymander regimes such as U.S.A., U.K., Canada, India, etc. — with their AREA fixation stuff that does NOT represent human voters.
P.R. and A.V.
Demo Rep; instant runoff voting/alternative vote IS NOT the same thing as proportional representation. But I don’t know if you’re simply confused or purposefully making an unrelated argument.
And by “A.V.”, do you mean “Alternative Vote” or “Approval Voting”? (Acronym overloading will be the death of me.)
I don’t think “Instant Runoff Voting” is know as such in any part of the “rest of the world” except the USA.
A much more interesting article is that referenced from the blog:
http://www.economist.com/world/britain/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15451200
Or this from last year.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/28/electoral-reform-referendum-labour
# 2 Alternative Vote = one more JUNK *reform* — by a regime trying to stay in gerrymander power.
P.R. = Total Votes / Total Seats (using pre-election candidate rank order lists to transfer surplus and loser votes) = REAL Democracy = REAL reform.
A.V. [U.S.A] = Approval Voting for executive/judicial offices.
Long term — Condorcet voting — for all offices.
A MAJOR part of the EVIL ROT in the U.K. for centuries has been the EVIL powermadness from having the same persons having both legislative and executive powers in a parliamentary regime.
At least something got learned the very hard way on this side of the Atlantic Ocean in 1775-1776 — i.e. separation of powers.