Talk:Instant-runoff voting

Title

Given that the USA has trouble even running their polity properly, democratically and without corruption why has this article got an American English title? Albatross2147 (talk) 23:39, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Even weirder, it doesn't seem to be called IRV consistently in the US. Shouldn't it have the widest use title (I'm not sure what that would be, but I don't think that it would be IRV) or the oldest? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.111.27.50 (talk) 12:16, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

indeed i imagine alternative vote would be better. of course clarity of the difference between AV and STV might made clearer. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.153.141.237 (talk) 18:31, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

If the title of the article had been AV Alternative vote it would have been useful in the context of the recent UK referendom on AV. Prime Minister David Cameron was able to state that only three countries use AV. Whereas, it would seem that AV (IRV) is being used by many more countries. I am quite sure that the majority of UK citizens are under the impression that FPTP (First Past the Post) is the most used voting system in the World. Whereas, in another Wikipedia article Table_of_voting_systems_by_country it is fairly clear that FPTP is used to elect a government by little more than half of the world's countries, but the rest use a variety of different voting methods. GGeoff (talk) 20:30, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Unsourced material

I think this should stay off the page unless someone can find a source to back it up: "Votes are not transferred from 1st choice to 2nd to 3rd as lay people would expect. Voters may think that if their first choice is eliminated, then their vote will necessarily go to their second choice. However, if their second choice and their third choice were eliminated before their first choice is eliminated, then their vote goes to the next ranked non-eliminated candidate -- their 4th choice, in this example. Had their vote been counted for their second choice earlier (instead of for their first choice candidate who was still in the running), their second choice might have survived elimination. Thus voters must still make compromise voting decisions, though not to the same extent as with plurality voting." H5mnd (talk) 19:04, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

it is descriptive of one of the standard forms of running such an election, though badly worded.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.153.141.237 (talk) 18:31, 9 June 2009 (UTC) signed by --Abd (talk) 18:41, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

supplementary voting

The introduction is not clear about the difference between AV and the Supplmentary Vote (which is important as the English mayoral elections are held using SV, not AV, and are mentioned and cited in the introduction). Should this page not also be merged with contingent vote? Cripipper (talk) 13:31, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Removal of {{Expand|section|date=}} tag from History section

This article, I think, is long enough. If I'm wrong, then just revert my edit.
--NBahn (talk) 07:09, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Attack on introduction and strategy/tactical defense

Someone has been removing the Robert's Rules quote from the introduction, and inflating the importance of the monotonicity criterion, without even mentioning that voting systems violating the monotonicity criterion (irv, contingent, rank-three, etc.) are always far more resistant to strategy and tactics than the alternatives. Therefore, I propose reverting to this version unless there are good reasons to simply restore the introduction, remove the contrived unsourced examples, and point out that the violation of the monotonicity criterion is an advantage, not a liability. 99.25.113.203 (talk) 15:21, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

There are good reasons to do the latter instead of simply reverting. There's no way that violating the monotonicity criterion should be considered a disadvantage of IRV, contingent, or anything in between -- that is exactly where they derive their strength against fraud. 98.210.193.221 (talk) 17:59, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

There's no way that violating the monotonicity criterion should be considered a disadvantage of IRV, contingent, or anything in between -- that is exactly where they derive their strength against fraud.

Your personal views aside, the vast majority of professionals in this subject view the monotonicity criterion as desirable. On wikipedia's voting systems page, it is listed under "criteria that are accepted and considered to be desirable by many voting theorists." The argument that monotonicity "is exactly where they derive their strength against fraud" is plain wrong. Any system that violates monotonicity exposes itself to tactical voting, by definition. If raising the ranking of a candidate you like can cause him to lose, then tactically (and dishonestly) ranking him lower can cause him to win. 66.131.197.203 (talk) 16:26, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Edit: I have included a section on the disadvantages of non-monotonicity without removing your section on claimed advantages. Both arguments are now there, and people can judge for themselves which is more logical. Sorry for all the edits, I kept rewording things in the section I added. 66.131.197.203 (talk) 17:42, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

I thought the change was a bit confusing too ,but consulted with someone who said that there is a legitimate argument that any system that upholds monotonicity presents more transparent ways to engage in strategic voting. Your point here actually is misleading in that it assumes that voters would know that they would benefit from dishonestly ranking a candidate lower. That is basically unknowable in any real election, so it really doesn't expose IRV to tactical voting. Tactical voting is only likely if people can figure out how it will help their side. So I'd suggest taking a look at the way you edited an article and making that point clearer. RRichie (talk) 18:16, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Your point here actually is misleading in that it assumes that voters would know that they would benefit from dishonestly ranking a candidate lower. That is basically unknowable in any real election, so it really doesn't expose IRV to tactical voting.

I'm not sure who told you that this kind of information is unknowable in any real election, but I can easily prove that to be wrong with a counterexample. And not only that, but it is a relatively generalized counterexample. Assume (sorry, I'm going to break the tabs here for clarity):

Edit: I made a serious mistake here and wrote down an example that, while exhibiting deliberate strategic voting, did not violate monotonicity. That has been corrected. See the original mistake in my edit history.

(1) There are three candidates (or, almost equivalently, there are 3 strong candidates and N-3 weak also-rans whose vote totals are a negligible fraction of the electorate).

(2) The electorate agrees on the location of these three candidates on the liberal-conservative political spectrum (that is, there's one liberal candidate L, one conservative candidate C, and one moderate candidate M, and everyone agrees on these titles).

(3) No one has a majority of the vote, which is required for this example to be of any interest at all, and M is not in the lead. Without loss of generality, say L is in the lead (if you prefer the conservatives to be in the lead, just swap L and C in this step and below).

I hope you agree these are realistic and very general conditions. Now let's get a bit more specific:

(4) C is in second place and M is in third place. When M is eliminated, L wins the runoff (because, for instance, M is a centre-left candidate).

(5) If C had been eliminated first, M would have won the runoff because C voters overwhelmingly prefer M to L.

Conditions (4) and (5) make this a non-monotonic election.

(6) A poll is released before election day showing everyone's first choice.

A numeric example for the poll would be: L=43, C=30, M=27 in a 100 voter election (+/- 1 pt margin of error)

In this case, it should be obvious to C voters that they will lose in the second round, because they understand that M's voters are more left leaning. The only assumption I'm making here about their intelligence is that they know M is a centre-left candidate. It should be equally obvious that if 6 C voters, 4 plus twice the margin of error, lie and switch preferences from CML to LCM on election day, then M will be eliminated, guaranteeing M a victory. This is non-monotonic strategic voting. By ranking L higher, they guarantee L's loss. With a small electorate like this, it is trivial to organize C voters to vote this way. Even on a larger scale, this kind of voter coordination is not terribly difficult thanks to party email lists (although it will certainly be harder to keep it a secret).

So I hope the above shows the following: When the race is effectively among three candidates with given ideologies and IRV displays non-monotonicity, strategic voters do not even need to know the second preferences of others in order to recognize how to manipulate the election (they can infer likely second preferences from the voters first choices, and candidates' ideology). All they need is a standard poll, the kind that is published in almost every democratic country before elections. For genuine horse race elections with N candidates, I agree it will be hard for your average citizen to deduce a voter strategy. But, there are plenty of people on a campaign whose jobs are to work out a strategy to get their candidate to win. It's very likely that if such a strategy exists, they will find and exploit it. 66.131.197.203 (talk) 02:09, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

With all due respect -- and appreciation for taking the time to work this through -- this kind of tactical voting remains quite unlikely. One reason to test that out is that it hasn't been an issue in thousands of IRV elections for national office. All of the above would be much more do-able with traditional runoff elections, and you do see it sometimes --but not often. So the way you have it overstates the opportunity to do it. RRichie (talk) 04:08, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

It is my understanding that the likelihood of non-monotonicity is still an open question (or a question with a disputed answer, at least), so I won't make any claims in the article. I do agree, however, that the way it is worded now, the section may accidentally give the impression that all IRV outcomes are non-monotonic (rather than just some, which is what the violation of the criterion says). So I have added the following

Note that a voting system which fails the monotonicity criterion does not have to give non-monotonic results in every election. What fraction of possible (or likely) outcomes are non-monotonic under IRV is an unresolved question.

I hope this is more to your satisfaction. I have actually tried* to calculate the probability of the above, 3 candidate, example, with the assumption of voters voting according to their place along the ideological spectrum (that is, if they are honest conservative voters, they will vote C>M>L and if they are liberal, they will vote L>M>C). Taking advantage of the fact that we get the same non-monotonicity if we switch L and C in every step, I have found that 1.13% (about 1/89) of all possible 3-candidate-on-an-ideological-spectrum elections exhibit vulnerability to this specific kind of tactical voting. Since most real life candidates can be associated with a place on the ideological spectrum by voters, you can argue that almost every time a 3 candidate election is held, there is at least a 1.13% chance of both a non-monotonic outcome and associated obvious tactical voting. (updated: apparently I can't do integrals properly) 66.131.197.203 (talk) 15:52, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

'*For any admins reading this, I am well aware of the OR prohibition. This will remain confined to the talk page. 66.131.197.203 (talk) 15:52, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

See adjustments in section and see how they work -- I think better to do something like this than a blanket statement without explanation. Also, I didn't realize I wasn't signed in when making the change. RRichie (talk) 17:32, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, I do take issue with part of what you have written. A voting system that fails monotonicity is susceptible to tactical and strategic voting if campaigns... The susceptibility of IRV (or any other system) to tactical voting is independent of the practical considerations. If a voting system is susceptible to a specific type tactical voting, that means that tactical voting can theoretically occur, not that it is practical or feasible to accomplish. Although I hope my example, now revised (sorry, wanted to make sure I got it right), explains how it is feasible at the very least in smaller elections. So what I propose is the following. We keep the parts I you deleted in your edit, which show how non-monotonicity allows for a specific type of tactical voting in theory, but also keep your section which discusses the practical issues making it more difficult to pull off in larger elections. I have modified slightly some of your text. For instance, determining with precision the amount of votes needed to switch is not necessary. In the example I gave, C voters could give up between 4 and 6 people to L and effect the same outcome. In other elections (where C and M are closer), that range would be larger.

It would look something like this:

By definition, a voting system that fails monotonicity is susceptible to a specific type of tactical and strategic voting. If a voter can harm a candidate X by raising X's ranking, then the voter has an incentive to dishonestly rank X higher if he wants X to lose. Similarly, if a voter can help a candidate X by lowering X's ranking, then the voter has an incentive to dishonestly rank X lower if he wants X to win. In large elections, campaigns must determine the relative positioning of different candidates, which strong challengers could be defeated by a shift in votes and how much of their votes are unnecessary to win and then can persuade the proper number of voters to change their ordering of candidates. Note that a voting system that fails the monotonicity criterion does not have to give non-monotonic results in every election. What fraction of possible (or likely) outcomes are non-monotonic under IRV is an unresolved question.

Actually, I think it would be more economical to say In large elections, campaigns must determine whether non-monotonicity is possible, how it will affect their candidate, and persuade the proper number of voters to change their ordering of candidates if they see an advantage.

Let me know what you think. I am going to fix the 'susceptibility' mistake right away, though.66.131.197.203 (talk) 23:19, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Your proposed language seems reasonable to me.

RRichie (talk) 12:54, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

"If a voter can harm a candidate X by raising X's ranking, then the voter has an incentive to dishonestly rank X higher if he wants X to lose." -- that is nonsense. Systems which violate the monotonicity criterion do so in only a tiny, unpredictable fraction of possible ranking swaps, and thus the statement is just plain false. We should be basing our arguments here on the published literature, not whatever example you can make up, because there's no way to tell how plausible or likely such a contrived example is. 99.27.133.211 (talk) 23:07, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

What are you talking about? That statement is as factually true as 'the sky is blue'. If you can harm a candidate you don't like by ranking him higher, then you have an incentive to rank him higher. It is not even an example, let alone a contrived one. It's a factually true statement. 66.131.184.130 (talk) 02:54, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

You can't know if the sky is blue if you're blind. Or, in other words,the fact that scenarios can be developed after an election to show something doesn't mean it's going to result in tactical voting of this nature. As some evidence of this, there are literally tends of thousands of multi-candidate IRV races for offices to try to find some record of gaming the vote - -Australia House races alone, but also hundreds of associations use it in contested races. I've never seen evidence of pre-election efforts to vote tactically due to nonmonotonicity. There definitely are examples from two-round runoffs, but that's because you can switch your vote back to your real first choice in the runoff RRichie (talk) 10:27, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

nonmonotonicity in two places

The editor today pointed out that IRV's failure to meet the nonmonotonicity criterion is seen as both an advantage and a disadvantage. Seems confusing to have it in both places. Might it might make more sense to have one discussion of it, presumably under disadvantages, with the "advantage" point woven in there? RRichie (talk) 18:57, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

AV

Why is the American name for this voting system the only one mentioned in the first para? 86.181.64.208 (talk) 08:07, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

"Instant-runoff voting" is more common than "alternative voting" and the other names are mentioned in the second paragraph. --Explodicle (T/C) 14:54, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

More common simply because there are more Americans on the internet. By that argument, all American terms should have precedence over others. This is not a subject of much interest to Americans. It's a core facet of electoral systems in other countries, where the most common name is along the lines of Alternative Vote, not instant runoff. 90.211.194.170 (talk) 12:38, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Ever since the 2000 election it has been a topic of great interest to Americans. That's part of the reason there are many American web pages. --Explodicle (T/C) 13:19, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm not convinced by the reasons given above for giving this page the American term as its main name. For example, the term "instant run off" isn't the one used to describe the system in Australia or in the UK. Yet it's widely used in Australia and a bill is about to be introduced in the UK to have a referendum on introducing it for Parliamentary elections. However, in the US the system is only used for a relatively small number of elections. Why should the different term used in them take priority? (I appreciate the point that there are more pages on the internet which use the term IRV, but is that such a good basis for making a decision?) Markpackuk (talk) 12:19, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

I recommend that we should wait for the result of the United Kingdom alternative vote referendum. When alternative vote gets adopted here, then this term will outperform the use of other terms by far. Markus Schulze 13:55, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

"Instant runoff voting" is a term developed for political advocacy, in the mid-1990s, promoted by FairVote. The method has been in proposal or use since the 19th century, but was almost never called that (one description of the STV method of single-winner preferential voting shows up in an article on the Ann Arbor election in the 1970s, I have seen no others before the FairVote invention). The name implies and has been used to promote the idea that IRV simulates regular runoff voting, and most IRV implementations in the U.S. were as a supposed single-ballot method of finding a "majority," replacing actual runoff elections. IRV, however, doesn't simulate runoff voting, or repeated ballot (as is strongly recommended by Robert's Rules of Order), but rather exhaustive ballot, and IRV only rarely, at least in nonpartisan elections, finds a true majority of votes cast. The name is thus a form of political propaganda. Balanced against this is that web usage of IRV is common. But academic papers almost never call it that. Most of those using the system, I believe, are in Australia, where the system is called the "preferential vote." In the U.S., that term has also been used for Bucklin voting, which uses a preferential ballot. I'd say that the bulk of actual usage should be the determining factor. See Preferential voting. --Abd (talk) 17:58, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Here are the page view statistics for instant-runoff voting. Here are the page view statistics for Alternative Vote. The statistics show that 58% of those, who read the instant-runoff voting article, were actually looking for "Alternative Vote". Markus Schulze 17:55, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

I think this issue of the name of the article should be given much more attention and possibly be the subject of a poll. At the moment, I think the naming of the article (and much of the aritlce) represents a view of the subject too heavily weighted in favour of US practices. An example of the effects of this (unintended) bias: in Australia, for example, which - according to this very article, this voting system was pioneered in practice in actual legislative elections and remains a central element of the electoral process - this voting system is all but universally called "preferential voting" and I would imagine an Australian Wikipedia user would be surprised to learn that Wikipedia calls this system "Instant-runoff voting" (especially so given the concept of "runoff elections" is unheard of in Australian parliamentary elections). This example should surely demonstrate that, at the very least, the issue of the name of this article is an important issue, deserving of more thorough discussion in these discussion pages. If I had to choose, I would vote [1] "Preferential voting"; [2] "Alternative voting" and [3] "Instant-runoff voting". Look at that - I just used a preferential vote!

Outside Australia, the term "preferential voting" is used for all election methods where the voters rank the candidates in order of preference. See: preferential voting and preferential voting (disambiguation). Markus Schulze 00:43, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Just on a side note I believe the Australian state of New South Wales experimented with run-off elections for the state parliament before the First World War but abandoned them because of the logistics involved in scheduling extra polling days, particularly in rural areas.

WRT the article title, isn't the term "preferential voting" as used in Australia as well strictly referring to all forms of numbered voting, both the single & multi member elections? Timrollpickering (talk) 23:12, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

In Australia, the term "preferential voting" refers to instant-runoff voting and the term "quota-preferential voting" refers to proportional representation by the single transferable vote. Markus Schulze 23:41, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

The name of this article

I see that User:RRichie requested that this article be changed to Instant runoff voting. As you will notice from the blue link, there is a redirect sitting there. The article has bounced around. It was created under the requested name. It was changed to Instant-runoff voting and then, possibly accidentally to Instant Runoff Voting and then immediately back to the present name, Instant-runoff voting.

The name is changed by Moving the page. This will create a redirect, generally, from the old page to the new.

However, double redirects are to be avoided, so moving this page is not simple. This is the situation with links.

Instant-runoff voting is linked from 627 pages if I counted right, I might not have.

Instant runoff voting is linked from 88 pages. (Redirects to Instant-runoff voting)

Instant Runoff Voting is linked from 55 pages. (Redirects to Instant-runoff voting)

IRV is linked from 23 pages. (Redirects to Instant-runoff voting)

If we move this article to Instant runoff voting, the links to that name won't be a problem, and links to the current name (with the hyphen) won't be a problem. Links to Instant Runoff Voting and IRV will have to be fixed.

There is also Instant-runoff voting in the United States, links. Notice the redirects. If that name is fixed, there will be other links to fix.

There is also [[1]]. This was an article created by consensus here, and then AfD'd by the instigation of an editor later blocked as having used sock puppets, and, though consensus wasn't really clear, there is some frequent sentiment against "controversies" articles, and the assumption seems to have been that the article was created as a POV fork (which wasn't true, we agreed on it here, both supporters and critics of IRV, because it was better organization of the information).

This time, we should make sure. From article usage here, the name mostly has the hyphen. I agree it looks odd. I never use the hyphen in my own writing, though I mostly use the acronym IRV.

I think that there is a bot that goes around fixing double redirects, so it might not be a problem. --Abd (talk) 02:55, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

The First Sentence here Looks Like a Typo

So I'm going to be bold and clip it (although I don't know where it's supposed to go).

and the United Kingdom<ref>{{cite news| url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/28/electoral-reform-referendum-labour | work=The Guardian | location=London | title='Alternative vote' is not the answer | date=28 July 2009 | accessdate=5 May 2010}}</ref>
—NBahn (talk) 12:43, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

The Condorcet criterion

Someone tried to removed this section by commenting it out. Unfortunately HTML comments don't nest, so the result was a mess. I've removed the comment, restoring the section. If you want it gone, delete it outright. Relaxing (talk) 15:21, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

The historical record offers multiple examples in which IRV counting rules produced a different outcome than the "first past the post" (single seat plurality) system.

"The historical record offers multiple examples in which IRV counting rules produced a different outcome than the "first past the post" (single seat plurality) system."

I know of no situation in which a country, municipality etc. has run an election simultaneously using two systems in parallel, so haw can this assertion be true?

I agree the statement is asserting something it can't mean. I'd assume it is intended to mean the "plurality winner" from the first round of IRV process was different than the final winner in IRV. Tom Ruen (talk) 21:55, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Copy of text that was recently added inappropriately to introduction

For those who want to work with it in the appropriate place in the article -- I assume mostly in "pro's and con's, which already is long and somewhat repetitive -- here it is:

Like all single member per district voting systems, IRV rewards groups with strong regional support. For example, in the 2010 Australian election to the House of Representatives, The Nationals had about one third of the support of The Greens but garnered seven seats to The Greens' one. It is worth noting that different winners can result depending on the order in which candidates are dropped and how their votes are redistributed. The final winner is not necessarily the one who has the broadest support overall.This can be seen in an example of a three-candidate election - A, B & C - where B is the second choice of both A and C and the second choice of B supporters is split between A and C. If B is dropped first, either A or C wins, depending on who gets the larger number of votes on the second round. While B is the most broadly acceptable candidate, he only wins if A or C gets dropped first. Because the winner depends on the order in which candidates are dropped, IRV does not eliminate tactical voting. This is one reason why Exhaustive ballot is generally preferred (see section on Robert's Rules of Order below) except when practical concerns make it too difficult or expensive. For example, many cities use a form of Exhaustive ballot to elect their Mayors despite the added expense of handling multiple election rounds. It is however common for them to restrict the candidates who get carried over to each next round. Usually they will use a minimum level of support or take only the top number of candidates. France goes to the extreme by only allowing the top two candidates to compete in the second (and final) round of elections. In the 2002 Presidential election, for example, leftist voters faced a bitter choice, and found themselves rallying under the unlikely cry “Better the crook than the fascist” as they held their noses and voted for the conservative Jacques Chirac over the even more conservative Jean-Marie Le Pen. Exhaustive ballot also allows for deals and/or power sharing to be negotiated between rounds in exchange for support. For example in the final Canadian Progressive Conservative leadership race, David Orchard negotiated an agreement with Peter Mackay to not merge their party with the Canadian Alliance party in exchange for Orchard's support. Mackay broke the agreement almost immediately upon winning the party leadership. In other cases, support is exchanged for a prominent position within the organization. While many decry these "deals", they do increase the value of later round support and reduce the chance that prominent candidates will be ignored once the election is over. Instant runoff voting is superficially similar to the Exhaustive ballot. Whereas in an Exhaustive ballot, voters cast their ballot, and can change their vote, after each round of vote counting, in IRV votes are locked in and the runoffs are done automatically with just one ballot. It sometimes produces the same winner as Exhaustive ballot without the time and expense of multiple voting rounds. The result can be found 'instantly' rather than after several separate rounds of voting often separated by weeks or months. The trade-off is that voters cannot change their vote or voting strategy once the various candidate's actual support is revealed. IRV can also be considered a degenerate case of single transferable vote (STV) when filling a single position. While STV redistributes votes from the top and bottom (winners and losers), in single-position elections, votes can only be redistributed from the bottom. The historical record offers multiple examples in which IRV counting rules produced a different outcome than the "first past the post" (single seat plurality) system. One example is the Labour Party Deputy Leadership election (2007), in which two candidates held the lead before a third candidate won a majority in the final round of voting. While the results may differ, there is often considerable debate over whether they are better.

RRichie (talk) 22:23, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Several inaccuracies regarding IRV and the "spolier effect".

Please refer to this analysis: [2] regarding the 2009 mayoral election in Burlington Vermont using IRV.

"IRV eliminates the spoiler effect in many cases." It mitigates such effect but does not necessarily eliminate it. Should be reworded.

"Under IRV, voters are not forced into choosing between the lesser of two evils" Worded as unqualified as this, this is objectively false. Referring to the above analysis, there were 1513 voters who found out after the election that marking their first choice for mayor caused their last choice to be elected. Had IRV survived to the next election, what would these voters have to consider in the polls, given their experience in the previous election. If the same dynamic existed, these Republicans would have to choose between the lesser of evils (the Democrat) and the greater of evils (the Progressive) from their POV.

"IRV never leaves a "spoiler" candidate for the second-place candidate to blame." That is objectively false. In the example cited above, the Republican candidate was a spoiler. He was a loser and if he had not run and voter voted the same way for the remaining candidates, the winner of the IRV election would be the Democrat, not the Progressive.

"Using ranked preference ballots, any number of candidates can run without "spoiling" being a factor." Not so. Particularly if IRV is the method of tabulating the ranked preference ballots. It's a bit better for Condorcet, but not even always true in that case. Nonetheless, to make that unqualified statement inside the IRV article is a laughable error. It just is not true and voting method scholars have known that for decades.

It's very irresponsible for such factual errors to be published in this article, especially without qualification. What is this? A Fairvote.org website? 64.222.90.194 (talk) 05:20, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

citation needed for united states: berkeley, san leandro

under "united states" (table of contents)the article states citation is needed to verify that AV voting has taken place in berkeley and san leandro, california. both cities are in alameda county, as is oakland, (which does not carry the citation needed notation.) alameda county instituted AV ( IRV ) in all its area at the same time. counties govern all voting procedures in california, not individual municipalities. ( I.e., Alameda County Registrar of Voters.) berkeley and san leandro did indeed begin using IRV, and there are more towns and cities in that county not listed in the article which did the same, as well as all unincorporated areas of that county. contact state of california, secretary of state, for complete list of IRV voting instituted in the state so far. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.75.65.155 (talk) 17:48, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

UK Conservative Party Leadership Elections

The introduction states that IRV is used to elect the leader of the UK Conservative Party. This is not true. Under the current rules a new ballot is held the day after the previous ballot, and thus there is no instant run off. Furthermore, the electorate consists solely of Conservative Members of Parliament until the run-off between the final two candidates, when the full party membership is allowed to vote. Also, even if a candidate does receive more than 50% of the vote at any of the preliminary stages they are still not elected. This is certainly not IRV. Jordi22 (talk) 16:35, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Good catch: it appears I was misinformed. As a matter of interest, which system does it fit into? Sounds like Two-round system, or similar. Regards, Anameofmyveryown (talk) 01:37, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

A primary election process is closer, since two round system will stop if a majority winner is found in the first round, while the primary round can reduce candidates but never picks a winner. Tom Ruen (talk) 02:22, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

It's a good question as to which system they do use. As far as I'm aware the procedure is completely unique. I suppose you could classify the preliminary votes by Members of Parliament as a form of primary election, although a very closed one. The run-off between the final two candidates, where the whole membership can vote, is then conducted as a simple First Past the Post election. Jordi22 (talk) 18:16, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, Tom Ruen and Jordi22. Regards, Anameofmyveryown (talk) 17:51, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

If there are only two candidates then the electoral system is irrelevant - all electoral systems[1] will produce the same as FPTP under those circumstances so at that stage you might as well keep it simple. It doesn't mean that the conservatives elect their leader using FPTP.

[1] Is someone going to be able to come up with some exotic system where it doesn't? ;-) Bagunceiro (talk) 08:39, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Closed party list with only one party, only one winner, but two candidates on the party list. The first-ranked in the list will win every time (assuming number of votes > 0) under the list system, but not necessarily every time under FPTP. Well, you did ask...:-) Regards, Anameofmyveryown (talk) 17:51, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

And I had every confidence that someone would have a smart alec answer. ;-) Bagunceiro (talk) 14:55, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Don't underestimate me: I have several smart-alec answers...:-). Regards, Anameofmyveryown (talk) 15:00, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Range would not necessarily follow FPTP RodCrosby (talk) 15:37, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

No consensus to move. Vegaswikian (talk) 05:28, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Instant-runoff voting → Alternative Vote – reason: wp:commonname and more concise. There are a variety of official names. Though search tests aren't perfect they indicate this is the most common name by some distance: Alternative Vote ~ 2 million hits [3] and Instant-runoff voting ~ 0.5 million hits [4] Tom B (talk) 11:06, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

It looks like your results may be skewed by the fact that there's an upcoming referendum in Britain on the issue, and "Alternative vote" is the terminology used in that campaign. The term doesn't appear to be in common use in Australia, which is the only large country using the system. Powers ^T 11:51, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

But even Australia doesn't use the term 'instant-runoff'. Their parliament states, "The Alternative Vote [their bold] is known to Australians as Preferential Voting and to Americans as Instant Runoff Voting," [5] You're right the referendum has increased the hit count for AV but that still counts towards common name usage. Tom B (talk) 12:58, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

I distrust raw Google counts, because one can imagine uses of the phrase that have nothing to do with the scheme in question. ("If candidate A is disqualified, my alternative vote is for candidate B" — admittedly contrived and awkward, but I'll be amazed if something of the sort doesn't come up in the search soon after the recent UK coverage.) Instant runoff at least can't easily mean anything else. —Tamfang (talk) 05:46, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Even excluding referendum I didn't see anything other than the current British debate in the first hundred results. —Tamfang (talk) 05:51, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Let's wait whether alternative vote gets adopted in the UK on 5 May 2011. If it gets adopted, this article should be moved. Otherwise, it shouldn't be moved. Markus Schulze 14:41, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

That's a bizarre metric. Why would that have any effect on what the common name of this voting method is? Powers ^T 18:15, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

If the alternative vote gets adopted for the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, then this use of this method outperforms every other use of this method by far. Therefore, it would make sense to move this article to "alternative vote". However, if this referendum fails, then it will be forgotten very quickly. Markus Schulze 18:38, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

If the referendum succeeds, then AV will be the term used in four elections to sovereign parliaments rather than three. The best "IRV" can claim is a bucketful of mayoral and city council elections, as best I can determine. AV's claim to be the primary name is pretty strong whatever the referendum outcome. Happy‑melon 19:33, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

I would agree with this being discussed, but think it should wait until after the referendum. If AV is not passed, it's not clear whether AV will be used much at all -- it's not used anywhere but the UK, as far as I know, and it not passed and not used there, I suspect won't get much use there. In lieu of AV< "Preferential voting" up to this point would really be the strongest contender as a term, but it - like "ranked choice voting,"-- is an umbrella term that has been used to describe very different methods... Bottomline ,however, is that if UK passes AV, making the change would seem to make a lot of sense. RRichie (talk) 20:05, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

It looks like History_and_use_of_instant-runoff_voting (and IRV#Global_use in this article) might be good places to start some clarifying work, listing uses by country, so perhaps the section names should include the terminology used in that country. It might seem useful to identify if there's any key differences between names and implentations like variations contingent vote specifically.

I guess the main effect of a move would be ~50 renames of IRV in the article to AV? Tom Ruen (talk) 21:38, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose IRV clearly represents what it is, AV is just muddy, and WP:ENGVARious in favour of British English. Proportional representation with a second ballot is an alternative vote. 65.94.45.160 (talk) 03:44, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Electoral systems with a second ballot go under many names, such as additional member system, but I've not come across any case of a country which uses them calling them "alternative vote" and none of the electoral systems references books I've seen use the phrase in that way either. So when you say a system with a second ballot "is an alternative vote", I'm not sure what you're basing that on - can you point me at examples of other people using the phrase in that way? Markpackuk (talk) 08:07, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

(Note - I have absolutely no opinion on the move request - the current name is fine, I think AV is fine too.) Just noting additional member is actually quite a different system - that's more like mixed member-proportional systems with "top-up" seats. IRV/AV is simply a system for choosing a member based on the eliminated preferences of voters for lower candidates. Orderinchaos 09:23, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose - stick with IRV, but I think it's worth putting "Instant-runoff voting, or, Alternative vote" or something similar in to the first sentence as the title of the article. I see Alternative Vote links here so that bit is already covered. Timeshift (talk) 12:15, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Variations of the same party

Preferential voting allows one to have several parties of generally the same leanings, but none the same field separate candidates. For example, over here, one has the country and liberal parties, which generally co-align yet hold different base groups. The country party tend to cater for the country electorates, while the liberals tend to be more metropolitan orientated.

You could then field three candidates, say C, L, and Labor, and while most of the people might agree with the general right-wing C/L parties, the labor would win FPTP. In preferential voting, the lesser of the C/L would generally spill to the larger, with some leakage. So the member who ran second would win.

It's also quite possible for the third highest vote to win, if there is a considerable flow of preferences from the C/L to a fourth party (eg Greens). This happened in the division of Melbourne in the 2010 elections.

The analysis given in the table does not account for this. It assumes that each of the several candidates are of radically different persuasions, and could be treated equally. Something like preferential voting allows one to divide a single party, like the UK conservitives, into several in a known coalitions, one might be able to vote on variations of the lesser of two evils.

--Wendy.krieger (talk) 07:30, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Seems like a good point to make in the article, ideally grounded in a specific example for which you can show the numbers.RRichie (talk) 15:18, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

tie-breaking rules is gone!?

It looks like there's a broken internal link here. In the election procedure process section, it says "If there is an exact tie for last place in numbers of votes, tie-breaking rules determine which candidate to eliminate. Some jurisdictions eliminate all low-ranking candidates simultaneously whose combined number of votes is fewer than the number of votes received by the lowest remaining candidates." But the link to the "tie-breaking rules" leads nowhere. This was removed here in the history.

This seems to me like it was valuable information, and its removal makes the article less consistent. I think we should bring it back. --TheAnarcat (talk) 01:09, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree. The deleted section was tagged as unreferenced, and removal comment "Deleted unreferenced sections. Please locate a source before restoring any of them." Some of it is just common sense, stating the issues. For specific election rules I guess someone has to look up implementation, online, or reference from printed documentation. The key idea for me is to recognize that ties can happen, more often than simple single-vote elections, and an election implementation needs specific rules to face them before the election occurs! And something maybe not clearly discussed in what was deleted, that some tie-breaking rules will treat ballots unequally (like eliminating who was behind in a previous round), and that risks calls that it breaks "one person, one vote", and nearly all the rules, except random tie-breaking. Tom Ruen (talk) 04:20, 26 January 2012 (UTC)