The print edition of the New York Times for March 24 has this Thomas L. Friedman column, recommending that states pass Instant Runoff Voting, and also recommending that states create nonpartisan commissions to draw congressional and legislative district boundaries.
Friedman cites the work of Larry Diamond, author of “The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World”, and coordinator of the democracy program of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law.” Diamond is a Stanford senior fellow.
Friedman says that if states used IRV, centrist moderates would have a better chance of being elected as independent or minor party candidates. Thanks to Carter Momberger for the link.
The brain dead math challenged Friedman is unable to detect that IRV does NOT use most of the data in a Place Votes Table.
P.R. and nonpartisan A.V. — regardless of math MORON know-it-all columnists.
I’m anticipating a lot of contention regarding redistricting in 2011. Articles about redistricting are becoming numerous. Once the new maps come out, I think many people, now aware of the process, could feel slighted as they are drawn into a political minority in the new district. Friedman points to gerrymandering then draws a line to changing electoral systems. He’s points to IRV, which is great, but there’s a gamut of ways to holding elections. Americans, hopefully, will draw a similar path towards election systems that open access to ballots and the seats of power.
Not surprising that Friedman is endorsing IRV, he’s famous for being dumb:
http://exiledonline.com/thomas-friedman-the-empires-useful-idiot-an-exile-classic/
Here’s a better deconstruction of Friedman:
http://www.nypress.com/article-11419-flathead.html
IRV/”Alternative Vote”/”Ranked Choice”/whatever-you-want-to-call-it only works well with 2-and-half parties; not with three. It’s trivial to construct an example where a strong third-party candidate still spoils an election, despite the use of IRV. Here’s two I wrote:
http://leastevil.blogspot.com/2009/10/how-to-decide-where-to-go-for-dinner.html
http://leastevil.blogspot.com/2009/06/presented.html
Demo Rep is right: approval voting and proportional representation.
Under Top 2, a voter need not be concerned that his vote in the primary might be wasted. He will always have an opportunity to make a second choice in the general election.
Louisiana, the state that has used the system the longest has a larger share of independent members who were elected as such, than all but one of the 49 state legislators elected by non-partisan candidates.
# 5 Advanced math = head to head Condorcet with a YES/NO tiebreaker — requiring both Number Votes and YES/NO votes.
P.R. and A.V. in the meantime — due to the near ZERO math skills of lots of folks — like Friedman.
Demo Rep: can I quote you on that? I hear a surprising amount of arguments from people saying approval voting is too complicated.
(And my personal favorite extension from approval is score voting, mostly because of this:
http://rangevoting.org/BayRegsFig.html
Which suggest that, yes, while Condorcet *can be* better than approval, it only is if voters will tend to ignore strategy under Condorcet elections, and not under approval or score voting.)
http://www.fairvote.org/assets/Single-winner-voting-method-chart.pdf
there is no ideal form of voting. Even defining who should win the race is contentious… most overall support, most “top level” first place support, or what?
IRV would be excellent and miles better than anything we have. Approval voting, while great, is still somewhat susceptible to spoilers because of psychology, not math.
remember people, it’s not robots out there voting, it’s people.
The “spoilers” in approval voting mean your second choice wins instead of your first. The spoilers in IRV mean your LAST choice wins instead of your first.
IRV would be a smidgen better than what we have, while approval voting would be a significant improvement. That’s what the graphic I posted is trying to show.
#8 Quote whatever whenever.
ALL election methods have problems with 3 or more choices near the winning boundary line.
YES/NO = Absolute support
Number Votes = Relative support
Possible to combine the 2 using number votes IF the voters have some brains — NOT likely in this New Age of more and more math MORONS — due to rotted- to- the- core publik skoooooools.
Example — 5 choices x 2 = Number Votes Range
Number Votes
1 to 5 = YES (i.e. All choices acceptable)
6 to 10 = NO (i.e. None of choices acceptable)
————
IRV is ABSOLUTELY F-A-T-A-L.
Standard Example — Times are TOUGH. The *middle* is badly split. Think 1860 U.S.A. or 1933 Germany.
34 H-W-S
33 S-W-H
16 W-H-S
16 W-S-H
ONE guess who wins with IRV.
ONE guess who wins with Condorcet or Approval or Bucklin.
H Hitler clone, S Stalin clone, W Washington, George clone
The IRV winning EVIL fanatics will claim a mighty majority MANDATE for their EVIL stuff.