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Surely you can see from that simple case that you can send much more information about your preferences to be used for election with an IRV ballot than with an AV ballot.

Come again? You did research all the criteria that voting systems should pass, right? Simple tests, such as the Generalized Strategy-Free Criterion (Voters must not be able to shoot themselves in the foot by falsely ranking how they prefer candidates in an attempt to manipulate the outcome. See the example below). IRV fails all of them. Even plurality manages to pass two of them.

No, it does not. You can see from a purely information-theoretical perspective that IRV is more powerful than AV.

More information does not ensure a more accurate result when the voting system itself is almost certain to return bad information. In addition, the whole "more information" argument fails to regard whether the way the system processes the votes is sure to lead to an accurate result. From an information-processing-theoretical perspective, IRV is the least powerful voting system.

Example: So you step up to the polls. You know candidate B (who you could stand) is neck and neck with candidate C (who you really hate). You really prefer candidate A, but are scared to death that C could get in if you don't give B your top support.

What would the average voter do in this situation?

As for the simplicity of implementation, the Australian and Irish parliments have been doing just fine for a long time, and after a recent sudden conversion to IRV, respectivly.

Good for them, they managed to switch with no troubles. Approval works with existing voting equipment, so the change can be made quickly without waiting for new equipment. A whole country could change at the same time without a hitch.

Instant run-off voting is a step in the right direction

Approval voting has some nice properties, but doesn't take into account something voters can easily express, the ranking of their preferences. Thus approval voting loses very useful information.

The best option for many kinds of elections is Condorcet voting. It's used by the uk.* Usenet hierarchy and, I've been told, by debian, but I've seen no confirmation of that.

I have my own rant about voting systems. (It's a bit rambling, but does anticipate and respond to some objections to Condorcet voting).

Instant run-off voting is a step in the right direction

Approval voting has some nice properties, but doesn't take into account something voters can easily express, the ranking of their preferences. Thus approval voting loses very useful information.

The best option for many kinds of elections is Condorcet voting. It's used by the uk.* Usenet hierarchy and, I've been told, by debian, but I've seen no confirmation of that.

I have my own rant about voting systems. (It's a bit rambling, but does anticipate and respond to some objections to Condorcet voting).

You can find some information on better solutions (particularly approval voting and Condorcet voting) at Electionmethods.org, including and explanation of why Instant Runoff isn't a much improved voting system.

You can find some information on better solutions (particularly approval voting and Condorcet voting) at Electionmethods.org, including and explanation of why Instant Runoff isn't a much improved voting system.

Considering that you're already going through the trouble of setting up a preferential ballot, it would be more smarter to go with a Condorcet election system as opposed to IRV.

IRV does have the advantage of scaling well to proportional representation systems, but the US is not such a system, so that doesn't seem very useful.

...they used proportional representation, I always thought.

Actually, they used Condorcet's method, which is superior to all other single-winner voting methods (trust the Debian project to get something like this right!). In any case, *no* voting method which yields a single-winner can be a form of proportional representation.

For an explanation of Debian's excellent method of choosing Project Leaders, see:

http://www.electionmethods.org/CondorcetEx.htm

Alex Berkman

Until we get rid of campaign contributions and begin doing public funding of campaigns

That's about the worst thing that could happen. Who gets this public money? Anybody that throws his hat in the ring, including my neighbor Jim-Bob who's just doing it for the cash? How do you decide who qualifies, and how it's apportioned? If it's based on previous elections, you've just decided to keep incumbent parties in office forever, which is precisely the current problem. What about third parties? What about people (like me) who object to subsidizing views I don't agree with? Or apolitical types who don't want to fund politicians at all? Why should you steal from (tax) them for politicians' gain? Thomas Jefferson said, "To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical." Some of us still believe that. If I want to support X's campaign, I will...but I don't expect you to, nor would I force you to. If you want to support his opponent Y, you can go ahead, but don't expect or force me to help you.

(The Constitution and Libertarian parties refuse to accept any government money they qualify for on this principle. Rare to find a candidate that is willing to stand on principles these days.)

What we need is not campaign finance reform but electoral process reform. I should be able to give unlimited support to support the views I agree with. There should be no caps, no spending limits. However, current electoral process favors the incumbent Duopoly and discourages third parties. Why are they called "third" parties? Because plurality voting exposes a false sense of a two-party system! Ever heard of the "wasted vote" problem, or voting for "the lesser of two evils"? We should not have to choose between two evils! Condorcet voting gives every contender a fair chance, because voters' freedom of conscience is preserved.

Changing to the Condorcet method would be the single best thing that could happen to American politics. I don't see reforms like this happening any time soon. The entrenched parties have too much to lose, so they're not likely to make it easier to defeat them. But something must be done.

• Condorcet's method
• ElectionMethods.org

The reason that there are no Libertarians (or other 3rd parties) in office is because the so-called "democratic process" is biased against them.

• In most localities, it is extremely difficult to get on the ballot unless your party got a certain % of the vote last time. But you can't get % of the electorate if you can't get on the ballot! Chicken and egg...
• Strategic voting, aka "I don't want to throw my vote away." The current "plurality vote" system allows someone that almost 2/3 of the voters did not want to win. (May the Best Man Lose.) This encourages betraying your conscience to vote for the "lesser of two evils" to keep the worse guy out. There are alternatives, such as the Condorcet Method, which is essentially an improved IRV. If you don't have liberty of conscience...what do you have?
• "Winner-takes-all" voting in single-seat elections (like president) is also a problem. It hampers minor parties from being visible at all if you have to carry a whole state to get noticed.

Third parties often unite on these causes, regardless how divergent their platform on other issues. Vote third party on the principle of it. If you can't trust Dems and Reps to be fair during the process of getting into office, how can you trust them once they are in office?

Get informed. Push for change.

The simple fact of the matter is that electronic voting by itself cannot possibly ensure integrity (assuming we are to maintain a secret ballot). That is especially true for online voting over the internet, but it is true even for precinct-based electronic voting. However, a combination of electronic AND paper voting can guarantee integrity if done right. Please see Ensuring the Integrity of Electronic Voting for the details.

For some good information on voting methods, please see ElectionMethods.org.

• always generate and use paper backup ballots
• use open computer architecture and open-source software
• prohibit online voting (except in exceptional circumstances)

Please see ElectionMethods.org for critical information on alternative election methods.

Who's throwing away those votes? In my view, it is not the people who cast them, but the people who count them. This result points out more clearly than ever the need for ranked ballots, where nobody's vote would get thrown away.

(The best-known ranked ballot system is IRV, which is indeed far superior to the current plurality system. However, I'm disappointed that more /.ers don't see the geeky reasons why Condorcet voting is even better.)

(As a response to your "I hope you're happy" flamebait: I am happy. Democracy means you don't get to second-guess anybody else's vote, but since you asked, I'll tell you about my vote. I think Gore is better than Bush by a razor-thin margin, although on several issues (encryption, military interventionism) Bush is actually better. But far more important than the tiny differences between Bush and Gore - far more important even than any message my Nader vote may have sent on issues such as fair trade and military spending - is the long-term health of our democracy. If this election leads to electoral reform, it will be easily worth it. I respect your reasons for your vote, I respect the supporters of Bush and Brown and Buchanan, now how about we stop pointing fingers and fix what's broken.)

electionmethods.org has a good mathematical analysis of a bunch of different election methods: Plurality (the current system), IRV, Approval and Concordet. They conclude, essentially, that:

• Plurality sucks (fails all but 2 criteria)
• The only thing that sucks worse is IRV (fails ALL criteria, including the basic requirement that voting for a candidate shouldn't hurt them. Yes, that's right, in IRV you can actually make someone lose by giving them your vote!)
• Approval is the best simple/easily-comprehensible system out there, passing 2 criteria that Plurality fails)
• Concordet is the best system out there, passing all the criteria except for one (and I believe it's been proven that you can never meet all of them). However, it may be too complicated for most voters to understand.

PLEASE, if you are going to advocate electoral reform, encorage people to promote Approval, Concordet or Borda (Borda isn't analyzed on that site so I don't know how it fares... but I guarantee it's better than IRV). Please, don't let's make a bad system worse.

Stuart.