Not to defend IRV, but I agree with James on this count. If a thin majority preferred B to A, but then found after the election that A received many first place votes, while B received hardly any, I'd bet money that some people would switch their votes from B to A, possibly enough to swing the results.
I followed the Dem primary pretty closely and there were a *lot* of voters that were voting for Kerry even though they liked Dean better - not for tactical reasons, but simply because it was the thing to do.
I know that it doesn't make sense and isn't rational, but the point is that people are irrational. And while that doesn't mean that awarding the winner to the Condorcet Winner is flawed (of course it's not flawed), there are still weird cases like this one where it could be a public relations problem. People are used to first place counting for more than second or third place, and it would be an uphill battle to convince an unsophisticated population that B is the rightful winner.
It's not a reason to support IRV, but it's definitely reason to try and include safeguards so an outcome like this wouldn't happen.
On May 18, 2004, at 7:53 PM, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote:
James Gilmour said:
But if you did decide this by a separate run-off election, I should not be surprised to find large
numbers of voters changing their preferences in that run-off election, and in so doing, reject the
CW.
I reply:
Why should they change their preference, James? So that IRV's winner will win? If you prefer C to B, and that's why you ranked C over B, you're making a ridiculous claim if you say that you're now going to start liking B better than C.
You continued:
Imagine a "real-life" scenario: Bush, Gore, Nader. Would we really have had four years of
President Nader?
I reply:
Yes we would, if 52% prefer Nader to Gore Bush, and 48 prefer Bush to Nader, and we held a runoff between Bush and Nader, for a presidential election. Then yes, James, we'd have had at least 4 or 8 years of President Nader.
You continued:
This is about more than voting arithmetic and measures for identifying "the most
representative candidate". It brings in systems of values which are expressed in different
dimensions from those used to measure representivity.
I reply:
I have no idea what you're talkling about. Perhaps your "system of values" happens to coincide with the definition of IRV? :-)
Mike Ossipoff
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