Sir Michael Dummett is a well respected British philosopher who has published influential articles on the theory of voting. He has written an excellent book on "Principles of Electoral Reform" (Oxford University Press, 1997) which ought to be a must read for anyone wanting to make an intelligent decision on the upcoming British referendum on introducing the alternative vote into British parliamentary elections. For those unable to read Sir Michael's book because of lack of availability or other considerations, there are two quotes from the book which I want to bring to their attention along with two issues outlined below. First, in his book Sir Michael makes the following observation which, although stated in a slightly different context, is certainly relevant in judging some of the support in favor of the upcoming referendum on the alternative vote, or IRV in American parlance. "the [UK] Electoral Reform Society, in particular, is not In my judgment, this would also be a very apt description of the American Center for Voting and Democracy (FairVote) which has had over the years a close relationship with the UK's Electoral Reform Society. The problem with this in terms of opening up our political processes to third parties is that they do not tell you that the system empirically has done little in this regard. When I was doing the research for the first chapter of my book on "Third Parties and Voting Second, proponents of the alternative vote do not seem to recognize that the system suffers from a serious behavioral characteristic--in technical terms its lack of monotonicity. When a voting system like IRV, or the alternative vote, is non-monotonic "a shift in public opinion toward a candidate can cause the candidate to lose, and a shift of public opinion away from a candidate can cause the candidate to win." The upshot of this that in casting their votes, voters cannot know for sure whether they are helping or hurting those they wish to support. Even first past the post, or plurality voting, with all of its flaws does not suffer this defect . Casting a vote under first past the post in favor of a candidate set to win will always help that candidate and taking votes away from a candidate set to lose will always assure that that candidate loses under FPTP. Proponents of the alternative vote, or IRV, like those associated with the UK's Electoral Reform Society and the American Center for Voting and Democracy say that the problem is much too rare to worry about in real elections. On this score it is useful to cite a comment that Dummett relates in his book from Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), a mathematician who did widely regarded work on voting theory. The comment by Dodgson is as follows: I am quite prepared to be told with regard to the One person responding to my June 22, 2010 Comment is Free Guardian piece on this asserted that this problem would only occur once in a century! Unfortunately the evidence simply does not bear this out. Supporters of instant-runoff voting IF WE WERE TO INTRODUCE INSTANT Those seriously interested in voting reform in the UK would do themselves a favor by reading and bringing to the attention of others the book by Sir Michael Dummett, "Principles of Electoral Reform" John Howard Wilhelm, Ph.D., |
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