At 01:09 PM 1/2/2009, Jonathan Lundell wrote:
So sure, IRV elects "majority winners" in one particular operation sense of the term. Even if there's a first-round absolute majority, we're faced with the problem of agenda manipulation. To take another US presidential election, in 1992 I might have votedClinton > Perot > Bush but only because I didn't have a meaningful NOTA option. In the immortal words of Jim Hightower, "If the gods had meant us to vote, they would have given us candidates."
Any election where write-in-votes are allowed has a NOTA option. Under Robert's Rules, there is no restriction as to what you can write in, though identifying yourself on the ballot might be an exception. You could literally write in "None of the above," and it would count as part of the basis for "majority," it wouldn't be a stupid vote, because if enough people vote that way, or for candidates other than the leader, the election fails and there is another opportunity for the "gods to give us candidates."
(In preferential public elections, where only ballots with a vote for a legally allowed candidate count, you would simply use your ranks to vote for any candidate where you would not mind being part of the majority which elects the sucka.)
Preferential voting with a runoff trigger can be a much better method than without it.
With IRV, it seems, about one nonpartisan election in ten, very roughly, the method produces a winner who would lose in a direct face-off with either the runner-up or an eliminated candidate.
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