Has anyone ever combined IRV with approval voting in order to eliminate some of the problems associated with traditional IRV?
I have been searching but I haven't found anything quite like it yet.
There are methods described on the electorama site, I believe, but I'll leave it to others more familiar with the landscape than I to describe and point to them. My concern here is for one thing:
If a candidate receives an absolute majority of first choice votes in the first round of counting, they are declared the winner.
This feature reproduces, with only slight amelioration, the basic problem with plurality elections. To point this out, I'll use an imaginary example based loosely on a tragic history. In other words, I don't know the details of the history, I'm imagining them, but the round outlines might be more or less accurate.
Elections are being held in a country we'll call Ruanda. The majority of people are Hutu, and a minority are Tutsi. There is a Hutu nationalist movement and party, and a Tutsi party. The Hutu nationalist party is able to obtain a simple majority in an election; by the proposed method (and by most non-Approval methods, I think), they elect the President. The minority Tutsi party is so shut out by this that a revolution is started.
Suppose there had been a Hutu who was widely trusted, including by many Tutsis. In an Approval election, this Hutu would win. But in an election method that awards victory to a candidate who is the first choice of a majority, he or she would lose.
The consequences of using an election method that fails to maximize consensus could be -- and have been, historically -- serious indeed. Wars are started, revolutions take place, and, in fact, worse.
This alone is a strong argument for Approval voting. But, as I have expressed many times, and will probably continue expressing, the whole political process, which includes how candidates get on a ballot, and how the electorate becomes informed, is critical. As they say, the devil is in the details.
Condorcet voting has a clear intellectual appeal. I'd say that where Condorcet and Approval voting produce the same winner, you've got a real winner, one who will unite the people and whose government will elicit maximum citizen participation and satisfaction. Where they don't, it gets complicated, but, in my view, this is a sign that the political process has not been allowed to move to completion, it has been interrupted by the artificial constraints of scheduled elections and a process that only periodically consults the public, that must make a decision NOW when there is insufficient information. A situation to be avoid if at all possible.
The probability is that if the political process is correct, even plurality voting will be sufficient. However, transitionally, advanced election methods could be very helpful.
And we badly need an open organization to make tactical and strategic decisions regarding election reform. To my knowledge, it does not exist yet. Any interest? (A mailing list is not an organization, though it could be a means whereby an organization meets....)
---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
