Should the Electoral System be Replaced with the Alternative Voting System?

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Instant-runoff voting (IRV), also known as the alternative vote (AV), is a voting system used to elect one winner from a pool of candidates using preferential voting. Voters rank candidates in order of preference, and their votes are initially allocated to their first choice candidate. If after this initial count no candidate has a majority of votes cast, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and votes for that candidate are redistributed according to the voters' second preferences. This process continues until one candidate receives more than half of all votes cast, at which point that candidate is declared the winner.
Instant runoff voting is used to elect members of the Australian House of Representatives, the President of India, members of legislative councils in India, the President of Ireland, the national parliament of Papua New Guinea, and the House of Representatives of Fiji. It is also used in Irish by-elections and for electing hereditary peers for the British House of Lords.
IRV is employed by several jurisdictions in the United States, including Portland, Maine; San Francisco, California; Oakland, California; Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Saint Paul, Minnesota. It is used to elect the leaders of the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats in the United Kingdom and the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada in a national primary and in the elections of city mayors in a number of countries including the UK (in the variant known as supplementary vote) and New Zealand.

I am not an expert on this subject, nor do I pretend to be, but I find the electoral system - TERRIBLE!
I think AV is a better system and could only help change the political culture in the right direction, as popular candidates will be ones who can get second-preference votes from their rivals’ supporters. Politicians and officials who go in for negative campaigning with personal attacks on other candidates are unlikely to achieve many second and third preference votes, so they will have to approach the election more decisively than at the present time, with more emphasis on their own policies and principles in a positive light.

Any input into this subject would be great!
Thanx. . . AB

I have heard nothing of this system.

Thanks for sharing I will comment later. . .

This is still a system of popular vote which has proven ineffective in our national elections. What is it that you detest so much about the electoral college?

We in the UK have had a referendum on this exact idea this month and it was rejected. I think the general consensus was that it would give the more distasteful parties, like the BNP more votes.

A candidate with only one real focus (ie immigration) could get a lot of votes with the AV system, then your stuck with a lame government in every other issue. Also, I know the system here is different but, here the AV would have given us a lot more hung parliaments, which means more backroom deals to get the prime minister (we dont vote for him, the party with the most seats chooses)

reply to post by AnteBellum


What a great idea. That way everyone's vote is counted several times over. Seems like the truest electoral process I have ever seen! Would love to have it in the us. It would also make the birth of a valid and competitive 3+ party system more doable. How many people wouldn't vote for Ron Paul if they thought it would take away from their second choice.

Something along this line of thinking..." I would love to vote for Ron Paul, but I really don't think he has a chance at winning,and if I do vote for him, Sarah Palin would win because it would take away votes from my second choice...which is bozo the clown.( just an example) Brilliant!!!

reply to post by pyrodude


Popular vote doesn't mean you win the election.
Limited to a two party system.
Mainly the above two but also:
Electors have the potential to go against there party and state if they disagree with the choice.
A tie would go to the House(P) and Senate(VP).
The winner-take-all system in each state, candidates don't spend time in states they know they have no chance of winning, focusing only on the tight races in the "swing" states.

Originally posted by AnteBellum
Instant runoff voting is used to elect members of the Australian House of Representatives

Yeah, we have this system in Australia, and the biggest complaint with it seems to be that you end up with a winner that only a small number of people actually wanted. eg... with 6 or 7 candidates, you could easily end up with a winner that was NOT the primary choice of 90 percent of the voters.
A second 'problem' is that you start getting backroom deals between parties to create preference systems. Parties hand out "how to vote" cards on election day telling the sheeple how they want them to vote, and a surprisingly large number of voters just go with that order. Thus, parties arrange the preference list on those card depending on secret deals that are only found out after the election is over (or never).
The biggest problem however, and the reason that in the end it really doesnt matter much, is that no matter who you vote for, you always end up with a politician.

I think it should be replaced with a very simple method. Popular vote.

The electoral college was created back when the US was new because at the time the founding fathers feared the people might not be educated enough, to make an appropriate decision and it was put in place to make sure the best person got the job.

Well, I think we are more than capable now of making our own decision. Get rid of the electoral college and go with the popular vote.

George Bush would not have been president had we done that.... Food for though.

Understand that the electoral system is embedded in the US Constitution so any change would have to be made through one or more amendments. Secondly, I think many people don't realize the intent of the system. They just think, "One person, one vote. End of story." It doesn't work that way, so they think "it's terrible!" It really is not in context. The first thing you have to get over is that it's all about you.

It's not all about you. It's about the states. I know we're told it was all because of transportation and communications difficulties. Then we're told that since thiose are now solved the electoral system is invalid. Once again,, it's about the states. Without it, the east coast and California would choose every national election we had. The electoral system forces the country to consider Wyoming, the Dakotas, and many other states into the equation. That way it's not as easy for the left-wing coasts to dominante the elections.

Originally the "United States" was a plural term. After the Civil War it was increasingly seen as a singular term. Although we can pretend that the Civil War was all about slavery, the fact is it was much more than that, with "slavery" used as the emotional cause celebre to justify the war which, when fought, was the largest war in the history of humanity. Indeed, more people died in the Civil War than all the rest of the conflicts in US histiry combined. The war was "about" Federal government domination over the states. The states were no longer "equal," they were subservient to the National government.

This culminated with the 17th amendment in 1913 with direct popular election of senators which had been selected by state legislatures. States rights were again eroded. Now we have calls, like this one, for the removal of the electoral system altogether. What we will have if that happens is mob rule. Once we have mob rule, all that has to happen is the guy with the best television ads wins. The mob will loot the treasury, and the Republic will fail.

Oh, wait. That's already happened. Never mind!

It doesn't matter whatever voting system is used they will find a way to manipulate it to their liking.

It seems like a better system for sure and thank you for sharing this with us.
S+F!

I do feel though it would not matter. No matter what system we do have the elite will always get their choice to win.

Intriguing...

In reality, there is not just one good candidate and the rest bad, but a continuum of candidates from the best to the worst. This system seems to reflect that.

I agree there are problems associated with these systems, including popular vote.
But given the state of things in our country and being fed up with a two party system, I am still leaning toward the Alternative Vote System.

Does anyone know another method of voting then the 3 spoken of?
Electoral
Alternative
Popular

Are there ways we can combine beneficial attributes of these individual voting systems to make a stronger system?

No....we should get rid of the electoral college, and go solely on the popularity. Far to often we have seen the popular candidate get beat out by an alleged electoral vote.

Originally posted by arriana
We in the UK have had a referendum on this exact idea this month and it was rejected. I think the general consensus was that it would give the more distasteful parties, like the BNP more votes.

A candidate with only one real focus (ie immigration) could get a lot of votes with the AV system, then your stuck with a lame government in every other issue. Also, I know the system here is different but, here the AV would have given us a lot more hung parliaments, which means more backroom deals to get the prime minister (we dont vote for him, the party with the most seats chooses)

Given the number of single-issue voters we already have in the United States, I'm not sure if an AVS would actually make matters worse.

reply to post by AnteBellum

I would love a voting system like this here in the U.S. It's been shown that First Past the Post systems, like the one we have now, lead to a two-party system. I think it's abundantly clear that a lack of real choice in our candidates is crippling us as a country. I also think we should have proportional representation system for Congress. We need to break this constant Republicrat deadlock we've gotten ourselves into.

This one seems the most advanced preferential voting method:
en.wikipedia.org...

reply to post by AnteBellum


Hi

Could you provide a link to your source? Thanks -

I find the idea intriguing, but I am wary of changing anything so fundamental in the governmental system here in the U.S. For a lot of people where I'm from, the only paper more holy than the Constitution is the Bible. I agree with their sentiment in this regard, so anything that monkeys with it other than just tacking on amendments makes me jittery.

reply to post by mishigas


I don't know how I could of forgotten that. . . Thanks!

Wiki

And here are more:
IRV
Fair Vote
IRVSite
Link