opinion

A plurality winner? In such a case, more people would have voted against the winning candidate than for! This is how Tim Pawlenty was elected -- twice. Consider a separate election between the two top winners. Everyone who voted for the top two candidates votes the same way in the separate election, and everyone who voted for the dropped candidate voted the way you indicated in your second example. You'd get the same result. So it's not really IRV that is causing this to happen -- because the same thing could happen in a separate election. There is no way, mathematically speaking, to address all possible anomolies of run-off voting (whether "instant" or otherwise). That means we'll just have to live with the occasional fluke election. But I prefer that to a candidate who wins with a plurality in the first round. Say there were 99 candidates running, and 98 of those candidates received 1% each. The 99th receives 2%. In a plurality system, the winner received 2% for vs. 98% against. Is it fair to have a candidate in office whom 98% of the voters didn't want? It's an extreme example, but mathematically sound. So you have to pick your poison. My poison of choice is some kind of runoff vote, not plurality winners. But I would guess that most people's poison will depend on whether or not their candidate wins under the rules in play at the time.

ebfauvel, I agree with you. The election method we use now (called first past the post) that produces plurality winners frequently does not reflect the will of the voters. Runoff elections don't do much better, and IRV is even more complicated and susceptible to odd quirky results (i.e., DJ's scenario above).

There are better methods. For example, the ceiling N/2 voting method (where every voter votes twice if there are three or four candidates, votes thrice when five or six candidates, and so on) automatically accommodates for more-than-two-candidate elections, is simpler to vote, simpler to count, virtually guarantees the winner has a majority vote, eliminates the spoiler effect of third party candidates, and guarantees the least popular candidates will not win.

It's still ends up being majority voter, correct? They way people run for office these days so negative, you never really get a chance to judge the intelligence level of candidates, or find out where their loyalties really are. And now with the Supreme Court decision favoring corporation giving, the little people just don't matter.

I think there is going to be a certain segment of voters, who are going to see a corporate sponsored candidate, as a negative. Also, without taking sides on any issue, how many times in the last two decades, have you heard someone write or say, "a vote for a third party candidate is a wasted vote" and you basically agreed, although, you really really wanted to vote for that third party person. I never ever vote for a candidate because of the letter in from of his/her name. I always try to vote for the candidate I agree with on the issues, but more importantly, someone intelligent who reasons well after listening to all sides of an issue. These candidates are getting tougher and tougher to find these days.

It is antithetical that voters should vote for multiple candidates for a single office. People whined about more choices at the ballot box. When other parties got candidates on the ballots, it split the vote and the result is a non plurality winning. So be it. You wanted choice, you got it. IRV is a liberal construct that seeks to pull the ind't voters to the socially liberal Democrat candidates once their first choice is out of the running.

NO IRV

In your senerio, where are Tom's 1st place voter's 2nd choices?

Tom is never lower than 2nd place, so they are never looked at... it doesn't matter what they are.

thanks liberals, for coming up with a crazy system with irv where if i vote for my candidate, i cost him the election, whereas, if i vote for his opponent, then my guy wins. YEAH! great system!

Rushed this thru instead of watching Mpls who was already going to use it. We could have went to school at their expense to see if it worked, or what the flaws were. But the typical rush by liberals resulted in this passing. It's is still a joke, you expect Mpls to pass this kind of junk, but St Paul just can't ever wait to jump in the soup with them or the likes of California anymore.