Talk:Instant-runoff voting

DanKeshet, your reversion was inappropriate. This article as it stands is still biased towards instant-runoff voting without explaining its disadvantages. I've restored the description of the trade-offs versus runoff voting, but left out the description of the trade-offs versus approval voting, save only the simple observation that it's easier to do tactical in preference versus no-preference (approval).

Those trade-offs will go back in, unless I hear a good reason not to do so soon. If you wish to have a project on voting systems, you should be more willing to edit material rather than delete it or revert it. --142

The reason I reverted it was because you are using non-standard terminology. You describe approval voting as one method of instant runoff voting. This is not how the rest of the world uses the term instant runoff voting. You might say that IRV is a misnomer, but you can't just pretend it means something else. Finally, IRV is not a misnomer and approval voting is not a runoff any more than first-past-the-post is. You just pick whoever has the most votes. There is no eliminating of other candidates. DanKeshet

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Which places in the world use the term "instant-runoff voting"? How many of these places actually use the system in more than a minor way? Tannin

All the places listed in the first paragraph use it in a major way. Australia is the best example. DanKeshet

Thanks Dan. My question was about the term, however. I have spent more than 40 years here in Australia (plus a little time in New Zealand), and I can assure you that I have never, ever heard the preferential system described as "instant run-off voting" before - and bear it in mind that we get a great deal of our media content from the UK and the USA. On the face of things, I'd say that a change of the article title is called for, but I ask just in case the "instant run-off" term is actually the more common one in other parts of the world that use the preferential voting system. Tannin 16:16 Jan 17, 2003 (UTC)

Ah, sorry. Similarly, here in Cambridge, MA we use single transferable vote (STV) to elect our city council and it's called "proportional representation" (PR), never STV. However, PR, like "preferential system" is a hopelessly generic name--there are many very different systems of PR and of preference voting. The term IRV is used overwhelmingly here in the states; I'm not sure about in other places. DanKeshet

To add to my comment, I believe that in Ireland they call it "Alternate vote"; I wouldn't mind moving it there, though I see no reason as we have a redirect. I see that it's also called "preference vote": it would be a bad idea to move this page there as "preference vote" is a generic term used to describe many systems. DanKeshet

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This is considered a weakness by the advocates of a more deliberative democracy, who point to the French system of presidential election where such between-round dealings are heavily exploited and useful (they say) to draw together a very factionalized electorate. However, proponents of instant runoff voting point to the 2002 French election as an example of where the French system went badly awry; with the votes divided between sixteen candidates, an extremist candidate strongly opposed by most voters was able to make it to the second round with less than 17% of the vote in the first round.

I removed this, not because I think it's implausible that this argument was made, but becuase this anonymous he-said she-said stuff is not really appropriate for wikipedia. Does anybody have one reproducible reference to one person pointing to the French model as a model of deliberative democracy in a criticism of IRV? DanKeshet