In the past I've mentioned Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) as a way to fix the totally broken voting situation that's led to "lesser of two evils" contests for as long as I've been a voter. Well, thanks to a link in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
novalis's journal, I am reminded that IRV is rather broken itself. I had looked into this a while ago, but forgotten the details; the Election Methods Education and Research Group (EMERG) has a good collection of information, as does Wikipedia. The first thing to know is that Arrow's impossibility theorem proves that no voting system is perfect, which is almost as depressing as Gödel's incompleteness theorem. Fortunately there is somewhat of a loophole, in that if you relax the definition of "perfect" a little bit, there are some voting systems that satisfy all reasonable criteria; in particular, the EMERG advocates a form of Condorcet voting. However, the Center for Voting and Democracy (CVD) (who advocates IRV) has its own complaints about Condorcet (and other alternatives). Oh dear, just when it seems like the media (e.g. The Nation) might finally be getting the message that plurality voting sucks, there's some serious dissent about which alternative is best. I'm currently more swayed by EMERG's arguments towards Condorcet than by CVD's arguments against it, though I need to do some more reading, but I'm really afraid that this kind of confusion may mean we're stuck with plurality voting (and the corrupt two-party system it engenders) for the forseeable future. Bah!
novalis's journal, I am reminded that IRV is rather broken itself. I had looked into this a while ago, but forgotten the details; the Election Methods Education and Research Group (EMERG) has a good collection of information, as does Wikipedia. The first thing to know is that Arrow's impossibility theorem proves that no voting system is perfect, which is almost as depressing as Gödel's incompleteness theorem. Fortunately there is somewhat of a loophole, in that if you relax the definition of "perfect" a little bit, there are some voting systems that satisfy all reasonable criteria; in particular, the EMERG advocates a form of Condorcet voting. However, the Center for Voting and Democracy (CVD) (who advocates IRV) has its own complaints about Condorcet (and other alternatives). Oh dear, just when it seems like the media (e.g. The Nation) might finally be getting the message that plurality voting sucks, there's some serious dissent about which alternative is best. I'm currently more swayed by EMERG's arguments towards Condorcet than by CVD's arguments against it, though I need to do some more reading, but I'm really afraid that this kind of confusion may mean we're stuck with plurality voting (and the corrupt two-party system it engenders) for the forseeable future. Bah!- Boris - Feedbacker (thanks to
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genericus)