IRV vs. Condorcet on Slashdot



An interesting intersection of my two worlds. I regularly visit Slashdot for discussions about Apple and Open Source. However, their ranking-based news system covers a wide range of "news for nerds" including politics, and this week their attention turned to Condorcet voting systems, especially as compared to Instant Runoff Voting. In particular, they cited the work of my friend Mike Ossipoff and others on the Election Methods mailing list.

This is an interesting topic for radical centrists, since most of us -- Iike other reformers -- support IRV. The problem is, IRV doesn't quite do what its proponents say it will. Yes, it will help with the spoiler problem , but only up to a point; it breaks down precisely when things get interesting, and 'third-parties' become comparable in influence to the two major parties. Alas, some combination of inertia and ignorance -- plus obscure technical disputes -- keeps CVD (the major reform movement) committed to IRV. I personally advocate a Condorcet-compliant variant called Maximum Majority Voting, and hope someday other radical centrists will recognize Condorcet's superiority -- as Scientific American did.

Posted: Mon - October 4, 2004 at 06:02 AM        

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