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Throw out your misconceptions about IRV, it only disguises the same problem we already have without solving it. We need Condorcet's method so that all preferences are counted. Throwing away someone's first preference (as in a run-off system) just because enough other people didn't share it is not indicative of their true vote any longer! All preferences must be evaluated simultaneously, not sequentually. The definition of winner is not "who has more votes than anyone else" but the more generalized "who could beat all the other candidates in head-to-head races".

Gah! How can you mention other voting methods without discussing the condorcet method. Mathematically, it's a generalization of both our current voting system and approval voting. It has many objective advantages over both, and kicks the crap out of IRV.

In any case, approval voting should be approved now.

Gah! How can you mention other voting methods without discussing the condorcet method. Mathematically, it's a generalization of both our current voting system and approval voting. It has many objective advantages over both, and kicks the crap out of IRV.

In any case, approval voting should be approved now.

This is why we need to institute Condorcet voting. Urgently.

It's called Condorcet Voting, and unlike IRV it's supported by mathematicians.

Not really. IRV could do lasting damage if initiated, because most people would be fooled into believing the problems have actually been fixed. IRV is deceptive like that. Nothing less than true Condorcet will solve the problem.

I'm tired of how often this gets proposed as a solution. IRV has major problems, and doesn't fix the problems it's supposed to.

With the current voting system we are effectively stuck with two parties. Someone else mentioned runoff voting. However, much better than simple runoff voting is a related method called Condorcet voting: electionmethods.org. This link should be read by everyone and I think it is what we need to bring into law. Urgently.

Them and the Libertarians...*sigh* Doesn't anybody get the facts on IRV anymore? What we need is a system that evaluates all voter preferences simultaneously, not sequentially. Sequential (i.e. run-off) analysis still excludes some voters' preferences - the only vote that's sure to be counted is the first choice - which is the exact same problem of simple plurality voting. The solution is Condorcet voting: exact same vote casting system as IRV, but different vote counting algorithm that doesn't throw any preferences out.

IMHO, the problem is that the US does not have run-off elections. This means that it is effectively impossible to have more than two parties. Anyone who votes for a third party that isn't likely to win can't vote between the final two candidates.

Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) has the same problem, it's just obscured.

More precisely, under IRV voters can safely vote for a third party, but only as long as that party has no chance of beating either of the major parties. If the third party grows strong enough to risk knocking out one of the major parties, then voters run the same risk they do under the current system. Why?

Suppose there are three parties, the two major parties and the up-and-coming Libertarian party, whose growth has been permitted by the implementation of IRV. Most of the Libertarian voters were drawn away from the Republican party, and still prefer to vote Republican over Democrat. So, they vote L, R, D, indicating their first preference is Libertarian, their second is Republican and their third is Democrat. As long as the Libertarian party is weak, their ballot ends up, effectively, being "R, D", but if the Libertarian party grows enough and draws enough support away from the Republicans that it actually *beats* the Republicans, then their ballot becomes "L, D". But the Libertarian party hasn't grown enough to actually beat the Democrats, so the voters, by choosing to put a Libertarian as their first choice, gave the election to the Democrats, their third choice.

The way Libertarian voters can avoid giving the election to the Democrats, of course, is by voting Republican over Libertarian, just as they have to do in the current system.

What's particularly pernicious about this failure of IRV is that third parties are most likely to grow in strength in exactly this way, by siphoning voters away from one of the major parties, and it is likely therefore that the first major party the newly-powerful third party will beat is the one its members are most sympathetic to.

A good argument can be made that IRV is actually worse than our current plurality system, especially because of its failure of the Monotonicity Criterion. It's failure of the Summability Criterion is also painful for large-scale application. In practice, I think it probably allows third parties to grow more than plurality voting does, which helps them get their viewpoint across, but it doesn't really help them to actually break the two-party lock.

If you're going to endorse a better voting system, you should really go for Condorcet, which is as close to a perfect voting system as is likely to be created. If you think Condorcet is too complicated (I don't), then you should favor Approval Voting, which is simple and more accurate than Instant Runoff Voting.

Condorcet is better because it attempts to fully account for all of each voter's preferences, but Approval is almost as good, and much better than Instant Runoff.

For more information about the strengths and weaknesses of different election methods, look here.http://electionmethods.org/evaluation.html#SC

IMHO, the problem is that the US does not have run-off elections. This means that it is effectively impossible to have more than two parties. Anyone who votes for a third party that isn't likely to win can't vote between the final two candidates.

Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) has the same problem, it's just obscured.

More precisely, under IRV voters can safely vote for a third party, but only as long as that party has no chance of beating either of the major parties. If the third party grows strong enough to risk knocking out one of the major parties, then voters run the same risk they do under the current system. Why?

Suppose there are three parties, the two major parties and the up-and-coming Libertarian party, whose growth has been permitted by the implementation of IRV. Most of the Libertarian voters were drawn away from the Republican party, and still prefer to vote Republican over Democrat. So, they vote L, R, D, indicating their first preference is Libertarian, their second is Republican and their third is Democrat. As long as the Libertarian party is weak, their ballot ends up, effectively, being "R, D", but if the Libertarian party grows enough and draws enough support away from the Republicans that it actually *beats* the Republicans, then their ballot becomes "L, D". But the Libertarian party hasn't grown enough to actually beat the Democrats, so the voters, by choosing to put a Libertarian as their first choice, gave the election to the Democrats, their third choice.

The way Libertarian voters can avoid giving the election to the Democrats, of course, is by voting Republican over Libertarian, just as they have to do in the current system.

What's particularly pernicious about this failure of IRV is that third parties are most likely to grow in strength in exactly this way, by siphoning voters away from one of the major parties, and it is likely therefore that the first major party the newly-powerful third party will beat is the one its members are most sympathetic to.

A good argument can be made that IRV is actually worse than our current plurality system, especially because of its failure of the Monotonicity Criterion. It's failure of the Summability Criterion is also painful for large-scale application. In practice, I think it probably allows third parties to grow more than plurality voting does, which helps them get their viewpoint across, but it doesn't really help them to actually break the two-party lock.

If you're going to endorse a better voting system, you should really go for Condorcet, which is as close to a perfect voting system as is likely to be created. If you think Condorcet is too complicated (I don't), then you should favor Approval Voting, which is simple and more accurate than Instant Runoff Voting.

Condorcet is better because it attempts to fully account for all of each voter's preferences, but Approval is almost as good, and much better than Instant Runoff.

For more information about the strengths and weaknesses of different election methods, look here.http://electionmethods.org/evaluation.html#SC

IMHO, the problem is that the US does not have run-off elections. This means that it is effectively impossible to have more than two parties. Anyone who votes for a third party that isn't likely to win can't vote between the final two candidates.

Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) has the same problem, it's just obscured.

More precisely, under IRV voters can safely vote for a third party, but only as long as that party has no chance of beating either of the major parties. If the third party grows strong enough to risk knocking out one of the major parties, then voters run the same risk they do under the current system. Why?

Suppose there are three parties, the two major parties and the up-and-coming Libertarian party, whose growth has been permitted by the implementation of IRV. Most of the Libertarian voters were drawn away from the Republican party, and still prefer to vote Republican over Democrat. So, they vote L, R, D, indicating their first preference is Libertarian, their second is Republican and their third is Democrat. As long as the Libertarian party is weak, their ballot ends up, effectively, being "R, D", but if the Libertarian party grows enough and draws enough support away from the Republicans that it actually *beats* the Republicans, then their ballot becomes "L, D". But the Libertarian party hasn't grown enough to actually beat the Democrats, so the voters, by choosing to put a Libertarian as their first choice, gave the election to the Democrats, their third choice.

The way Libertarian voters can avoid giving the election to the Democrats, of course, is by voting Republican over Libertarian, just as they have to do in the current system.

What's particularly pernicious about this failure of IRV is that third parties are most likely to grow in strength in exactly this way, by siphoning voters away from one of the major parties, and it is likely therefore that the first major party the newly-powerful third party will beat is the one its members are most sympathetic to.

A good argument can be made that IRV is actually worse than our current plurality system, especially because of its failure of the Monotonicity Criterion. It's failure of the Summability Criterion is also painful for large-scale application. In practice, I think it probably allows third parties to grow more than plurality voting does, which helps them get their viewpoint across, but it doesn't really help them to actually break the two-party lock.

If you're going to endorse a better voting system, you should really go for Condorcet, which is as close to a perfect voting system as is likely to be created. If you think Condorcet is too complicated (I don't), then you should favor Approval Voting, which is simple and more accurate than Instant Runoff Voting.

Condorcet is better because it attempts to fully account for all of each voter's preferences, but Approval is almost as good, and much better than Instant Runoff.

For more information about the strengths and weaknesses of different election methods, look here.http://electionmethods.org/evaluation.html#SC

IMHO, the problem is that the US does not have run-off elections. This means that it is effectively impossible to have more than two parties. Anyone who votes for a third party that isn't likely to win can't vote between the final two candidates.

Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) has the same problem, it's just obscured.

More precisely, under IRV voters can safely vote for a third party, but only as long as that party has no chance of beating either of the major parties. If the third party grows strong enough to risk knocking out one of the major parties, then voters run the same risk they do under the current system. Why?

Suppose there are three parties, the two major parties and the up-and-coming Libertarian party, whose growth has been permitted by the implementation of IRV. Most of the Libertarian voters were drawn away from the Republican party, and still prefer to vote Republican over Democrat. So, they vote L, R, D, indicating their first preference is Libertarian, their second is Republican and their third is Democrat. As long as the Libertarian party is weak, their ballot ends up, effectively, being "R, D", but if the Libertarian party grows enough and draws enough support away from the Republicans that it actually *beats* the Republicans, then their ballot becomes "L, D". But the Libertarian party hasn't grown enough to actually beat the Democrats, so the voters, by choosing to put a Libertarian as their first choice, gave the election to the Democrats, their third choice.

The way Libertarian voters can avoid giving the election to the Democrats, of course, is by voting Republican over Libertarian, just as they have to do in the current system.

What's particularly pernicious about this failure of IRV is that third parties are most likely to grow in strength in exactly this way, by siphoning voters away from one of the major parties, and it is likely therefore that the first major party the newly-powerful third party will beat is the one its members are most sympathetic to.

A good argument can be made that IRV is actually worse than our current plurality system, especially because of its failure of the Monotonicity Criterion. It's failure of the Summability Criterion is also painful for large-scale application. In practice, I think it probably allows third parties to grow more than plurality voting does, which helps them get their viewpoint across, but it doesn't really help them to actually break the two-party lock.

If you're going to endorse a better voting system, you should really go for Condorcet, which is as close to a perfect voting system as is likely to be created. If you think Condorcet is too complicated (I don't), then you should favor Approval Voting, which is simple and more accurate than Instant Runoff Voting.

Condorcet is better because it attempts to fully account for all of each voter's preferences, but Approval is almost as good, and much better than Instant Runoff.

For more information about the strengths and weaknesses of different election methods, look here.http://electionmethods.org/evaluation.html#SC

I agree completely that the current election system is very screwed up and that it is effectively impossible to have more than two parties. Many of the current problems like the continual worsening of IP laws are unlikely to improve under the two-party system, where both sides have effectively sold out to big business lobbyists. However, much better than simple runoff voting is a related method called Condorcet voting: electionmethods.org. This link is well worth a read and I think it is what we need. Urgently.

The US has a two-party system because plurality voting leads to Duverger's Law. Essentially, a single choice can only decide between two things (duh). When you introduce a third (or more) then there are multiple preferences, and these are not recorded by the system. These secondary preferences, when taken en masse, could have influence. This is the basis for Condorcet's method of voting. But since everyone somehow "knows" that only the top two contenders matter (though this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as we preselect the two that matter), and the only way to get what you want is to hold your nose and vote for something you don't want (now there's logic for ya!), this is what we're stuck with. If everybody simply voted honestly for their conscience/principles, we'd be better off. But most people vote out of fear instead.

"Independent" or "third party" candidates also appoint electors should their party's candidate win. For example, I am an elector for my party here in Nebraska.

I certainly don't claim to be an unsung hero, but I am a bit disappointed at how little attention my GVI (Graphical Voter Interface) has received. Check it out. I think you will like it.

The fairest way to have your vote count (and if the state is solid red or blue, it won't) is to have national instant run-off voting.

First, I've gotta say it: of course your vote counts! How do you think the state gets to be solid one color or another!? Votes.

But there are some other interesting issues to point out:

Instant run-off voting has some problems, including paradoxical cases where voting for someone can actually increase their chances of losing. Plus, it's relatively hard to implement, given the current state of our polling places.

One suggested alternative that makes a lot of sense to me is approval voting: voters select ALL the candidates they would like to see elected, leaving blank all the candidates they do NOT want elected. This can be done with no change to most of the existing polling systems, and counting is relatively straightforward.

Of course, all of these are arguments about how to implement a direct popular vote for president in the United States. That's not what the founders of the constitution wanted!

Right now we have tyranny of small states

Well, that is what the constitution intended. What you call tyranny is really just a slight advantage, of course... bigger states do get more electoral votes, after all.

We can't just reject the system out of hand because it's old; we'd have to have the debate about the states' role in the federal government etc. and whether/how that system should be changed.

- Peter

The fairest way to have your vote count (and if the state is solid red or blue, it won't) is to have national instant run-off voting.

First, I've gotta say it: of course your vote counts! How do you think the state gets to be solid one color or another!? Votes.

But there are some other interesting issues to point out:

Instant run-off voting has some problems, including paradoxical cases where voting for someone can actually increase their chances of losing. Plus, it's relatively hard to implement, given the current state of our polling places.

One suggested alternative that makes a lot of sense to me is approval voting: voters select ALL the candidates they would like to see elected, leaving blank all the candidates they do NOT want elected. This can be done with no change to most of the existing polling systems, and counting is relatively straightforward.

Of course, all of these are arguments about how to implement a direct popular vote for president in the United States. That's not what the founders of the constitution wanted!

Right now we have tyranny of small states

Well, that is what the constitution intended. What you call tyranny is really just a slight advantage, of course... bigger states do get more electoral votes, after all.

We can't just reject the system out of hand because it's old; we'd have to have the debate about the states' role in the federal government etc. and whether/how that system should be changed.

- Peter

Condorcet would be better than IRV.

Condorcet would be better than IRV.

Condorcet would be better than IRV.

Condorcet would be better than IRV.

Condorcet would be better than IRV.

The two axis model never worked, so it can't be breaking down.

At each election the Republicrats and the Demicans divide the political spectra (mulit-dimensional...as many as you can get people to think about). Everytime one of them stakes out a position, the other tries to manuver so as to stake out a position as close to that one as possible, but on the side which will yield more votes.

Generally, Republicans go more for positions that will yield increased money (for the party), so they can afford to buy more votes, and the Democrats tend to go for positions that will get them more votes directly. (Neither side always guesses correctly, but that's what they try.)

If your agenda is not to get elected, but rather to manuver the country's ideology, then what you do is stake out the most extreme believable position. Then your opponent will move in to a position nearly identical to yours. This should usually get you defeated, but sometimes there is a miscalculation, or people consider your opponent too cynical to believe.

This breaks down when both candidates have strong commitments along the same axis. Then a vote actually becomes a choice between philosophies.

N.B.: The third parties can play an important role here, by acting to draw off into irrelevancy voters more sympathetic, or antagonistic, to a position taken on an ideological basis. If that happens, it can prove strategically sound to fund a minor party with an ideology further away than you opponent along one of the political axii. Thus during the last election you find the Republican party subsidizing the Green candidate. This can be called gaming the system.

Personally, I find the entire process a magnificent argument against the US voting system. Condorcet voting would not suffer these flaws. (The increased complexity would necessitate a program to count the votes...but it's a pretty simple program, and even with paper ballots the tabulation is done by programs.)

I'd say many of us know the reason, but the reason is about two centuries out of date. The fairest way to have your vote count (and if the state is solid red or blue, it won't) is to have national instant run-off voting.

If you're going to change the voting system, why replace a broken system with a semi-broken system? IRV is better than plurality but has plenty of problems of its own. Condorcet voting is a much better choice.

Right now we have tyranny of small states.

This is a understandable, and common, error, but it's still wrong. The EC has two conflicting effects. The most obvious is that it gives residents of low-population states a slightly larger fraction of an electoral vote than residents of populous states. The other arises from the fact that most states deliver their votes in a bloc. This means that large states are much more likely than small states to swing an election. We saw evidence of this in 2000; even though Florida wasn't the only close state, it was the only one that mattered because Florida has a large population and lots of electoral votes.

Several mathematicians over the last few decades have performed a rigorous analysis of the relative effects of these facets of the EC, based on a simple measurement of the power of a single vote: What is the probability that a given vote will swing the entire election? The result is that a voter in a larger state has more power to decide the presidential election than a voter in a small state, because the advantage of a big bloc of electoral votes outweighs the advantage of fewer voters per electoral vote.

It's also worth noting that a more detailed analysis which takes into account the current political structure of the nation was done recently, and it found that, currently, the EC doesn't favor either party and that the EC will currently only return a result different from a popular vote when the electorate is very evenly divided. In those cases, a single new story, or even just some bad weather, might change the outcome in any case. In other words, the EC might "change" the outcome when the difference in the popular vote is statistical noise anyway.

Better systems for single-seat races are Approval or Condorcet (which you can find more about at ElectionMethods.org) and Proportional Representation would be great for Congress (our checks and balances work pretty well, so there's no need to move to a Parliamentary system). Another informative site (albeit somewhat confusing to navigate) is Accurate Democracy.

This is not something either party wants, so it will be a long, uphill battle. But neither party wanted campaign finance reform either, so enough popular support can get anything done (although 527s are bad, they're not as bad as soft money, and indeed, at least they help pull power away from the two big parties).

Okay okay. I admit I'm just wallowing in frusteration. Kerry is probably a good bit better than Bush. But I've yet to decide how to voice my disapproval of the whole mess.

I have been looking into which groups I can support or donate to to encourage voting reform. This seems to be a good starting point.

Cheers.

IRV is (slightly) better than Plurality, but I approve of Approval Voting.

maybe they'll eventually back voting reform and we can get a decent system like instant runoff

maybe they'll eventually back voting reform and we can get a decent system like instant runoff

Check out GVI, the Graphical Voter Interface. It's free software in every sense, and I think it's pretty nifty.

As with many things Debian, it is completely awesome that they choose to use the extremely logical mechanism that they use for voting and picking the winner. It looks like a form of instant runoff voting, which is a beautiful way of getting a winner that the most people are reasonably happy with, even if it isn't their first choice. In other words, it eliminates the "spoiler" problem where a no-chance-in-hell choice on the ballot (e.g. Nader) draws enough votes from the other similar candidate (e.g. Gore) that the election ends up falling to the candidate DISliked by the majority (e.g. Bush). There is no such thing as a "wasted" vote.

Click the link above for a better explanation of instant runoff voting (try the flash demo). It's ultimately the best way to get what the people want. I love that the IT organizations (Debian, ACM, IEEE) are using this!

Every time there is a Slashdot story about a Debian vote, someone plugs Instant Runoff. Debian has not, does not, and will not ever use Instant Runoff. Instant Runoff suffers from major flaws, and its only real effect is to allow symbolic votes for compromise candidates while effectively taking them out of the running. The primary difference between Condorcet and IRV is that IRV completely ignores everything but your top choice, until that choice is eliminated. This means that with IRV, if you have a favorite third party as well as a preference between the two primary parties, such as (Libertarian,Republican,Democrat) or (Green,Democrat,Republican), you are hurting the ability for your second choice to win over your third choice, because that preference is completely ignored until your first choice loses. This has two effects: when your first choice is weak, your vote for them is meaningless; when your first choice is strong, but not strong enough to actually win, your first choice could eliminate your second choice (Libertarian beating Republican, or Green beating Democrat), and then your last choice would win (Democrat beating Libertarian, or Republican beating Green), completely ignoring one of your preferences. This means that the only way in an IRV system to successfully express a preference in the two-party race is to rank one of the two parties first, which is the problem we have now.

To quote electionmethods.org:

Until a minor party is strong enough to win, a first-choice vote for them is essentially only symbolic. After a minor party is strong enough to win, on the other hand, a vote for them could have the same spoiler effect that it could have under the current plurality system. Hence, if IRV is ever actually adopted, we will likely remain stuck in the old two-party system [...]

Instant Runoff also has another major problem: results cannot be tabulated locally. In all good voting systems, if you tally the votes from one county, tally the votes from another county, and add the totals, then the results will be the same as if you had tallied all the votes together. With our current "plurality" system, the tally is an array of length N (for N candidates). With Condorcet, the tally is an NxN matrix. With IRV, however, one cannot just keep tallies, because a ballot is not equivalent to a set of pairwise votes; instead, one must either use a tally of size N! (one for each possible order), or just track every single ballot. This makes IRV highly impractical as well as being technically inferior to just about every other system.

Debian uses the much better Condorcet voting system. Like IRV, Condorcet gathers a ranked list of candidates from each voter. However, Condorcet looks at _all_ of your preferences at the same time. It treats the voting process like a set of two-candidate elections between every possible pair of candidates. This means that in a three-candidate election (Rep/Dem/Lib, for example), a vote for (Lib,Rep,De

As with many things Debian, it is completely awesome that they choose to use the extremely logical mechanism that they use for voting and picking the winner. It looks like a form of instant runoff voting, which is a beautiful way of getting a winner that the most people are reasonably happy with, even if it isn't their first choice. In other words, it eliminates the "spoiler" problem where a no-chance-in-hell choice on the ballot (e.g. Nader) draws enough votes from the other similar candidate (e.g. Gore) that the election ends up falling to the candidate DISliked by the majority (e.g. Bush). There is no such thing as a "wasted" vote.

Click the link above for a better explanation of instant runoff voting (try the flash demo). It's ultimately the best way to get what the people want. I love that the IT organizations (Debian, ACM, IEEE) are using this!

Every time there is a Slashdot story about a Debian vote, someone plugs Instant Runoff. Debian has not, does not, and will not ever use Instant Runoff. Instant Runoff suffers from major flaws, and its only real effect is to allow symbolic votes for compromise candidates while effectively taking them out of the running. The primary difference between Condorcet and IRV is that IRV completely ignores everything but your top choice, until that choice is eliminated. This means that with IRV, if you have a favorite third party as well as a preference between the two primary parties, such as (Libertarian,Republican,Democrat) or (Green,Democrat,Republican), you are hurting the ability for your second choice to win over your third choice, because that preference is completely ignored until your first choice loses. This has two effects: when your first choice is weak, your vote for them is meaningless; when your first choice is strong, but not strong enough to actually win, your first choice could eliminate your second choice (Libertarian beating Republican, or Green beating Democrat), and then your last choice would win (Democrat beating Libertarian, or Republican beating Green), completely ignoring one of your preferences. This means that the only way in an IRV system to successfully express a preference in the two-party race is to rank one of the two parties first, which is the problem we have now.

To quote electionmethods.org:

Until a minor party is strong enough to win, a first-choice vote for them is essentially only symbolic. After a minor party is strong enough to win, on the other hand, a vote for them could have the same spoiler effect that it could have under the current plurality system. Hence, if IRV is ever actually adopted, we will likely remain stuck in the old two-party system [...]

Instant Runoff also has another major problem: results cannot be tabulated locally. In all good voting systems, if you tally the votes from one county, tally the votes from another county, and add the totals, then the results will be the same as if you had tallied all the votes together. With our current "plurality" system, the tally is an array of length N (for N candidates). With Condorcet, the tally is an NxN matrix. With IRV, however, one cannot just keep tallies, because a ballot is not equivalent to a set of pairwise votes; instead, one must either use a tally of size N! (one for each possible order), or just track every single ballot. This makes IRV highly impractical as well as being technically inferior to just about every other system.

Debian uses the much better Condorcet voting system. Like IRV, Condorcet gathers a ranked list of candidates from each voter. However, Condorcet looks at _all_ of your preferences at the same time. It treats the voting process like a set of two-candidate elections between every possible pair of candidates. This means that in a three-candidate election (Rep/Dem/Lib, for example), a vote for (Lib,Rep,De

"Can anyone else guess why this project isn't opensource yet."

Check out GVI, the Graphical Voter Interface.

Parties are necessary to the functioning of a representative democracy. I'm not, however, at all certain that the division into two parties is either necessary or desireable. It is, however, implicit in the way that elections are organized. Therefore, if one wishes to change this, one needs to change the formalization of voting. Instant run-off has it's supporters, though I favor another system (Condorcet by a French mathematicial) which, unfortunately, has a name that is hard to remember. It's similar in many ways to the instant runoff, but differs significantly in the mechanism used for breaking ties. (Instant runoff would lead to a subtler form of the same problem as the current system whenever a third party started getting large enough to be significant.

FWIW, this is a detailed exposition of the Condorcet system
http://electionmethods.org/CondorcetSSD.py

The individual voters. I'm not saying anyone should be prevented from voting by the state; I'm saying that part of everyone's civic duty is to understand the issues before voting, and to not vote at all when the issue is beyond one's ability to understand. I'm primarily refering to cases where people are voting on individual issues, but the general concept still applies to elections of representatives.

My problem with "altnernative voting systems" is that those that push them the hardest would seem to have the most to gain.

I could take the same facts and say, "My problem with keeping things the way they are is that those who have something to lose by changing the voting system are the most silent."

It seems as though you're basing your beliefs on mistrust of others, rather than finding out for yourself. I suggest you actually read the link I posted (and perhaps this one too). The Condorcet winner of an election is a well-defined mathematical and logical concept that more accurately represents voter intent than any other system.

Online voting cannot possibly provide a paper trail, so it cannot be secure. Also, online voting opens up a pandora's box of vote selling schemes and vote coercion. See Ensuring the Integrity of Electronic Voting.

Implement Condorcet voting, and there won't be a need to "switch votes" because your preference was already registered.

Actually, IRV is not all it's cracked up to be. For more info (and other voting methods, like "approval voting") check out http://www.electionmethods.org/

Regarding your sig: I think what you mean to advocate is Condorcet Voting. Unless you really do like having a two party system.

I can't find out on the Debian site how the votes will be tallied, but I certainly hope that they've got the good sense to use instant runoff voting. Mathematically speaking, it's the best method of tallying votes. Practically speaking, it's the best method of ensuring that the person elected is the most widely-desired candidate.

I can't find out on the Debian site how the votes will be tallied, but I certainly hope that they've got the good sense to use instant runoff voting. Mathematically speaking, it's the best method of tallying votes. Practically speaking, it's the best method of ensuring that the person elected is the most widely-desired candidate.

IRV gives 90% of the advantages of Condorcet

Not really. It gives the illusion of being better than plurality voting and almost-as-good-as Condorcet - and that's arguably worse than the current situation.

Regarding complexity vs technical advantages, I think that as long as ballot casting is simple, ballot counting can be a little more complex. ("Yes sir, you can independently and manually verify these results. It's just going to be slow and tedious. But look how easy it is to vote! Just one, two, three!") Most people cannot even understand how our current (plurality) system is deficient. (No shame to them, they're just not used to putting much thought toward it.) If those who care enough to look critically at such things (like you and me) advocate a superior system, those who simply can't be bothered will listen to what we say...hopefully. So I think we're obliged to advocate the best possible alternative. If we present each of the shortcomings of other systems point by point at a level that's intuitive, with simple examples that illustrate those shortcomings, people will buy in - even if they don't like "math".

> IRV gives 90% of the advantages of Condorcet

Does it?

Want real representation? Check out Condorcet Voting.

Check out my article Ensuring the Integrity of Electronic Voting.

Well, I think we have to ask ourselves about the real purpose of the space program. The fact is that space science has few useful applications on Earth (despite the spinoffs which NASA keeps bragging about), and if science were our only goal, we'd be better off spending the money on other projects. Heck, even fusion reactors and particle accelerators would give us more bang for the buck.

No, I think that the real reason to send people into space is so people can be in space. Earth is starting to get too small for us, and there's always the risk of some global disaster, so people should think about colonizing the solar system (and, eventually, other systems). And while sending robots to Mars may teach us a bit about Mars, what we really need to know is how humans could live on Mars, and the simplest way to figure that out is to send a human.

Oh yeah, and in response to your sig:

The Problem with Instant Runoff Voting
Condorcet: A Better Election Method

Well, I think we have to ask ourselves about the real purpose of the space program. The fact is that space science has few useful applications on Earth (despite the spinoffs which NASA keeps bragging about), and if science were our only goal, we'd be better off spending the money on other projects. Heck, even fusion reactors and particle accelerators would give us more bang for the buck.

No, I think that the real reason to send people into space is so people can be in space. Earth is starting to get too small for us, and there's always the risk of some global disaster, so people should think about colonizing the solar system (and, eventually, other systems). And while sending robots to Mars may teach us a bit about Mars, what we really need to know is how humans could live on Mars, and the simplest way to figure that out is to send a human.

Oh yeah, and in response to your sig:

The Problem with Instant Runoff Voting
Condorcet: A Better Election Method

Under IRV, votes for minor parties are therefore symbolic at best, or dangerous at worst. [...] The only way a voter can be assured of not wasting his or her vote is to rank one of the two major parties as their first choice, which is precisely what happens now under plurality voting. [...] if IRV is ever actually adopted, we will likely remain stuck in the old two-party system, just as Australia still is, despite the fact that it has used IRV since around 1920. [...] In other words, IRV will not solve the classic "lesser of two evils" problem that plagues plurality voting. [...] IRV has other serious problems too, which are explained in more detail elsewhere at the website.

In summary, IRV is a deceptive and potentially dangerous non-reform masquerading as a reform. If adopted, the cure could be worse than the disease. Once the inadequacy of IRV becomes clear in actual practice, it could disillusion the public with electoral reform and thereby close the door to true reform. The stakes are way too high to get this one wrong. We can only hope that the well-intentioned and devoted advocates of IRV are still open-minded enough to recognize this reality. The battle for electoral reform will be difficult enough without insurmountable ignorance within the reform movement itself.

I agree with your underlying idea. I too was once a fan of IRV, but I recently learned (from other readers on slashdot!) about the problematic aberrations which can occur with run-off voting (instant or otherwise).

The page I linked to walks through several examples showing where IRV causes problems similar to our current voting method.

e.g. in close races with IRV, it is possible to cause your candidate to win by voting against him (A) and voting for a third-party (C) in order to eliminate the other major candidate (B) in run-off fashion.

i.e. the problem is the way IRV totally eliminates the lowest candidate to calculate the winner in non-trivial cases.

The site suggests another system called "Condorcet" which seems to be a much more fair and consistent way of calculating a winner.

In light of this new information, the paranoid in me is starting to think that IRV might be a superficial tactic for our appeasement, actually intended to further subjugate us. ;)

Tin-foil hats for everyone! :)