Submitted by CLAY SHENTRUP, Apr 3, 2007 23:24

Rob Richie is an audacious fellow. After being presented with an account of his inaccurate and misleading statements, he first denies any error, and then repeats this inaccuracy:

"Top two" IRV indeed is a form of IRV. It's what was adopted in North Carolina for a number of city elections this fall and is being proposed in Vermont.

Here's what InstantRunoffVoting.com - a "local partner" of Rob's "Center for Voting and Democracy" - says:

How does it [IRV] work?
If anyone receives a majority of the first choice votes, that candidate is elected. If not, the last place candidate is defeated, just as in a runoff election, and all ballots are counted again. This time each ballot cast for the defeated candidate counts for the next choice candidate listed on the ballot. The process of eliminating the last place candidate and recounting the ballots continues until one candidate receives a majority of the vote. [emphasis added]

IRV scenarios frequently occur in which X would beat Y or Z in a head-to-head race, but would lose if all three ran. Imagine that. IRV says X is better than Y. But then Z throws his hat into the ring, and suddenly IRV says that Y is better than X - even though the voters' preferences stayed exactly the same! Insanity? I'd say so. But Rob tries to confuse the lay reader into thinking there's some kind of sensible reason for this, even cooking up the rather meaningless notion of "core support", and trying to redefine the word "majority" to mean "IRV winner".

I have to commend Rob for having the audacity to suggest that "international consensus" tells us what a fair election is. International consensus says that IRV is so poor, it has only seen wide-spread long-term use in four countries (one of which recently became a military dictatoryship). International consensus tells us that plurality voting is a great system. Rob should consider embracing science instead of popular opinion, because we well know that the two often disagree (just ask Darwin and Einstein).

Finally, Rob's outro once again shows that he's willing to use whatever deceptive tactics necessary to push his agenda. He asserts his gut feeling that Range Voting would be more prone to strategic voting than IRV - but what has been explained to him several times is that even if that were true, Range Voting would still behave better than IRV. Rob Richie is a clever guy, who doesn't mind feigning ignorance when it's to his advantage.

Note: Comments are screened, and in some cases edited, before posting. We reserve the right to reject anything we find objectionable.