At 11:28 AM -0500 3/12/06, radio deli wrote: >I saw your post on the Elections Methods List. As a Vermont >legislator, we may have to decide the issue of IRV on a statewide >basis. To be honest, I'm not very enthusiastic about IRV. I would >prefer to support the candidate (not plural) of my choice, and if a >runoff must occur between candidates I didn't support, then make a >new decision based on the contest at hand.
When San Francisco switched from top-two-runoff to IRV, quite a lot was made of the cost savings, which did turn out to be significant. But a more significant benefit to using a single ranked-choice election (whether IRV or Condorcet) is participation. SF historically has seen a much lower turnout in the runoff election than in the main election. And of course the top-two runoff is even worse than IRV with respect to premature exclusion; I'd guess offhand that it'd be much more likely than IRV to eliminate the Condorcet winner. In practice, it's hard to justify a separate runoff election. It's expensive, tends to disenfranchise many more voters, and does a relatively poor job of finding the "best" choice by nearly any measure, especially in a factionalized election. It comes down to STV (IRV) or one of the Condorcet methods (of which the Schulze method is worth a close look). -- /Jonathan Lundell. ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
