Russ Paielli wrote:
What is too complicated? Nobody knows the exact answer to that question, of course, but let me tell you what I think.
I think you can forget about any method that cannot be explained in two or three sentences understandable by persons of average intelligence. Maybe that can be stretched to four sentences, but that's really pushing it.
Wouldn't STV then be defined as a complicated method? It has certainly found acceptance among large populations.
As far as I know, STV is a generalization of IRV for multi-winner elections. So the reasons for IRV's popularity apply to STV to some extent. Yes, STV is more complicated than IRV, but I think people tend to be more open to complexity for multi-winner elections because there is perhaps no way to achieve proportional representation without it. For single-winner elections PR doesn't apply and they expect simpler election rules.
--Russ ---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
