> 6. I advocate for FairVote's IRV3.
I hate to break this to you, But FairVote.Org is Astroturf. The
Republicrats and Democans know that people want reform. IRV (Instant
Runoff-Voting) is a reform changing nothing. We need to take a step back and
look at Duverger’s Law:
Duverger’s Law is an observation. Let us suppose that we have more
candidates on the left than right. Let us also suppose that we use plurality
(only vote for one candidate for each office). The candidates on the left will
split the vote causing the 1 of the candidates on the right to win. Over time,
this causes only one party on the left and one party on the right to survive.
That is why we have republicrats and democans.
Now to IRV.
With IRV, one ranks the candidates. One eliminates candidates from the
ballot. In IRV, someone on the right may list Libertarian first, but just in
case list Republican as third. Someone on the left might list Green as first,
but list Democrat as third.
People will disagree about who should be first or second, leading to
eliminations to third place. In third place, one only finds republicrats and
democans. Let us look at Australia as an example:
In Australia, one finds 2 houses. 1 house represents the political
views of Australia and uses STV (Single Transferable Vote). The other house
represents the interests of districts. It uses IRV. In the STV-house, one
finds lots of parties and independents. In the IRV-house, one finds only 2
parties with no independents and no third-parties.
IRV occasional reverses whether the republicrat or democan wins but
does not allow independents or third-parties to win:
If we would have had IRV in 2000, Gore would have won, but in
Presidential Election since 1856 no third-party or independent would have won
under IRV.
Many competitive single-winner voting systems exists such as Condorcet,
Score-Voting, Approval, et cetera. My favorite is Approval because it is
simple and runs on existing voting equipment:
http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Approval_voting
I hope that you will be weary of the Astroturf of FairVote.Org now.
For a general feeling of the feelings of voting experts, you should read this
position-paper:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oyJLxI9dciXBbowM5mougnbGHzkL3Ue1QkD8nnMwWLg/edit?hl=en_US&pli=1
The position-paper is a work in progress.
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