Actually, not every voting system allows for it. Last I checked, some parts of Australia use a version of instant runoff that discards ballots that have not ranked all candidates on the ballot. This garantees a majority outcome. Versions of instant runoff that allow you to fill out the ballot partially do not insure a majority, but it’s better to allow partial voting and bullet voting, than to disallow it. Also, under Condorcet you may be expected to do all pairwise comparisons, though this is not done in order to insure any majority outcome.

Instant Runoff is very complex in the counting, and needlessly so. I suggest reading “Reality Mars Instant Runoff” by Kathy Dopp on the link @34 bottom.

The system was rejected amidst evidence that approval voting was being gamed. Backers of petition candidates apparently were more likely to “bullet vote” for their preferred candidate and defeat candidates nominated by the board, whose backers were less tactical.

Approval voting also was abandoned in one of its few other high-profile uses, for elections for the leadership of the the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

Meanwhile, instant runoff voting is used for hundreds of private association and college elections, including many hotly contested ones. The Liberal Party of Canada has also just announced that it will use instant runoff voting when it moves to a national primary to select its leader. See a listing of organizations in the US using IRV here

http://www.fairvote.org/?page=1964

The 51 American colleges and universities with it are listed here:
http://www.fairvote.org/?page=61

Nothing could do more to quickly break up the “two party” duopoly.

PR is the norm outside the US, Canada and the UK. I tend to think that that most of the resistance to it comes from cultural prejudice.

The evidence seems to be in favor of range voting when it comes to elections for single offices.

And remember that some states have initiative and referendum. This allows the electorate-barring excessive procedural hurdles-to bypass D and R party hacks. A small state would probably be a more opportune target than a larger one.

1. The spoiled ballots she cites were in the non-ranked choice voting elections for the Scottish parliament — due to a bad ballot design along the lines of the butterfly ballot. Scotland was quite pleased with the results from its STV elections and has expanding STV for use in more elections.

2. Ranked systems can be done without sacrificing election integrity. Many election integrity leaders in the US have been working hard for IRV and STV. Here’s a good statement from the leader in Ireland’s fight against toucshcreen machines:
http://www.fairvote.org/?page=2536

3. McCloy fought against getting optical scan machines that could do full IRV tallies at the precinct in NC and now remarkably complains that… the machines can’t do full IRV tallies at the precinct. But North Carolina’s board of elections has developed a very sensible proposal for handling IRV counts that does not allow “ballot stuffing.” McCloy knows this, of course, but won’t admit it. The total number of first, second and third rankings would be tallied at the precinct and then compared at the central counting place where the IRV tally would be done — any changes would be noted. (And of course one needs to keep ballots secure for possible recounts anyway.)

4. It’s funny to have her suggest that IRV “weakens debate” when it gives third party and independent candidates an unfettered chance to put their best case forward. The Australian Greens ran candidates in every seat in 2007 and the MEDIAN number of candidates in races was seven. True, it’s in the PR-STV senate seats that they’re winning ,but Aussie Greens like IRV within the limitations of a winner-take-all system.

5. The League of Women Voters states groups that have been endorsing IRV after full-blown studies are largely the ones that led the fight for paper trails against national League policy. Joyce may want to cast aspersions against all state League activists, but that’s foolhardy and unreflective of the reality of the grassroots democratic nature of much state League activity.

McCloy has a simple tactic. Find URLs that seem to support her point of view, ignore all other facts and then throw lots of mud, hoping some of it will stick. A good example is her site’s recent post on Aspen, where:

* There was 100% valid ballots in the mayor’s race.
* The city had its highest turnout ever.
* Two of three incumbents were ousted, as reflective of the voter’s mood.
* Big money lost out again, as is becoming a pattern in IRV races, with the biggest spenders in the mayor’s race and council race losing.
* A post-election audit showed the counting system worked well and the count was done very transparently

Sadly, McCloy does all this against IRV and proportional voting (which she lambasts as unAmerican and awful, by the way) with no real alternative. She gives token support to alternative voting methods, but is doing nothing to help them in NC as far as I can tell. She has enough friends in the legislature that she could get a bill introduced for something like approval voting — but I’ll believe it when I see it.

It took a huge effort by members of LWV to force the organization to back away from its dangerous endorsement of paperless computerized voting.

IRV is much more insidious than paperless voting, because with IRV, even with paper ballots, transparency is greatly diminished. Heck, voters have trouble understanding how the tallies provide the results that they do.

The IRV groups in North Carolina are waging war on election transparency – by publicly endorsing the central counting of ballots cast at polling places – making it easier to stuff the ballot boxes, or perhaps fill in a few choices on some of those IRV ballots. Change just a few per polling place and voila – you have the results you want.

Another nasty thing IRV proponents are pushing is the use of uncertified software. Pierce County Washington got suckered into this, and their precinct optical scanners, with IRV software, can’t be used to count – IRV because they can’t handle the ballot images.

Scotland was talked into abandoning hand counted paper ballots for STV in 2007, and ended up with machines that didn’t do the job, 100,000 spoiled ballots party due to the machines, mostly due to voter confusion.

IRV is the trojan horse for election fraud and is insidious in nature – it sounds so good, so well intended, it inspires the emotions of people who can’t put their support behind one candidate – and in an academic setting, its fine. But for real life elections, IRV damages the integrity of the elections and it also weakens political debate.

see http://www.instantrunoffvoting.us for more

I don’t doubt the possibilities of IRV having flaws- I think they all have some flaw or another. As I said to Dale, I favor IRV but am certainly open to other proposals. I do doubt IRV could replicate the problem of plurality, however.

Erik – My first paragraph definitely is, but I have heard some criticism about IRV with respect to third party candidates and that, in the long run, the two major parties still have an advantage.

Here’s a link with some criticisms of IRV:

http://www.approvalvoting.org/irv.html

Your criticisms are more a reflection of plurality voting. Most elecotral reforms I’ve ever heard advocated do away with plurality voting as part of the package.

Also, you offer no support for your theory that “IRV voters won’t be strategic, but range voters will”. It’s actually very easy to vote strategically in IRV; and that strategy leads directly to two party domination (since it’s the same strategy as plurality.)

Nor do you offer support for your theory that approval/range fails in practice. In truth, it’s been successful for many professional organizations, in selecting the UN’s secretary general, and historically in the two longest-lasting democracies on record (Sparta and Venice); hardly a failure.

No, the simple fact is, and this has been shown through theorem (covered extensively at rangevoting.org) and through real-world data (Australia for instance), is that IRV, just like plurality, leads to a two-party dominated system. Therefore, third parties should not support it.

My recommendation is to eliminate primaries altogether and use approval voting in the general election instead. Let everyone run, regardless of party. It would be much less expensive in the long-run.

Hi Ross!

If Range seems hard for in the voting booth, just boil it down to fewer breakdowns and put it in words, not numbers, like great / good / tolerable / bad. Or else just go for Approval voting… can’t get it any simpler than that.