When Third Parties Go Your Way

It seems good.
Am I misunderstanding but isn't it just a popular vote?

However it's classified, It seems to have one of the same underlying weaknesses as the present system:

IRV depends upon the percentage of voters who vote who can indeed vote.
The closer to a 100% turnout the greater a true representation of the will of the people.

I suppose one could say that those who stay home have expressed their choice.

HankD

 

Of course it depends on how you desire the outcome. But generally speaking third party votes are usually wasted votes. In the case of Florida in 2000 both Democrats and Republicans who voted for Nader wasted their votes since each vote for Nader took away votes from the major candidate they most closely align with on most issues.

Voting for Wallace in 1968 was the same situation. If more conservatives had voted for Wallace we would have ended up with President Humphrey. I shudder to think how much further down the tubes this country would be if that would have happened. Of course liberals in 1968 would have been ecstatic if more conservatives had voted for Wallace.

If more conservative-leaning people had voted for John Anderson in 1980 thus taking votes from Reagan, we'd have had four more years of Jimmy Carter.

Here in Minnesota we actually had a third party candidate win the governorship. That was Jesse 'the body' Ventura, a professional wrestler. That was a disaster. Just last election we had a third party candidate siphon votes from a fine conservative Republican Tom Emmer, thus propelling ultra-liberal former senator Mark "evacuatin' Dayton to the governor. Dayton got 43.6%, Emmer got 43.2% and former Republican Tom Horner running as an Independence Party candidate got 11.9%. Yes, there was a recount.

 

The biggest one we got was Bill Clinton thanks to Ross Perot, that split the conservative vote right down the middle and Caused G.H.W. Bush to be defeated.

Walace and the American Party pulled votes from the Democrats as well. Wallace was a Democrat but one of the last fiscal conservative ones. He pulled votes from both sides and made it a real close race. Then he was shot in the next election period and was never able to recover his momentum.
You mention Nadar but Buchanon pulled votes away from G. W. Bush and that would have made Florida a none issue had folks not voted for him. If their are minor party candidates on the ballot they will pull from both Dem's and Republicans. Until we have a Strong third party like Wallace had in our ntion a vote for one of them will put one of the major parties candidates in office. Perot did it in taking away major votes for G.H.W. Bush and we got Bill Clinton.

 

I don't think so.

Nader got 97,000 votes, certainly almost all of them pulled from Gore's column.
Buchanan got 17,000 votes, certainly almost all of them from Bush's column.

There's an 80,000 difference.

 

Their were others who pulled from both.

 

He's got a conspiracy theory TV show on cable TV (can't remember the channel.) Also he's suing the TSA for having a body pat-down done before he boarded a plane. And he's mad because a Navy Seal wrote a book and said he had punched out Jesse at a bar in California.

I haven't studied instant runoff voting but it seems to me it won't help minor parties become contenders, if that is what you were thinking.

His governance wasn't that bad, if you like nothing getting legislated (I kind of fall in that camp) but he was a constant embarrassment. As governor he was the referee in a pro wrestling match. He said that religion was a crutch for weak-minded people, he said the streets of St. Paul were laid out by drunken Irishmen, said he wanted to be reincarnated as a bra, his 20-something son regularly partied in the governor's mansion and trashed it, etc. etc.

Hubert's son Skip was attorney general of Minnesota (I think) and was one of the losing candidates for governor when Ventura won. The other losing candidate was Norm Coleman, who went on to become a U.S. Senator after Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash about a month before election day. The Dems pulled Walter Mondale out of moth balls to substitute for the deceased Wellstone.

Minnesota politics are not boring. There was also Harold Stassen, a moderate Republican that ran for President like for 40 years. Also Eugene McCarthy was a U.S. House member in the 50's and a U.S. Senator in the 60's, and the first Dem to run against LBJ in 1968. Think about that--Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy, Walter Mondale, and Paul Wellstone all from one state. Yick!

 

Look at your example again. Candidate B was not the first choice of a plurality of voters, yet Candidate B ended up winning! This means that although he wasn't the first choice of most voters he won. Do we want that?

Let's try it again with 100 voters. First round.
Candidate A got 32 first choice votes.
Candidate B got 38 first choice votes.
Candidate C got 16 first choice votes.
Candidate D got 19 first choice votes.

After round 1, no one had over 50% so Candidate C is eliminated and his votes transfer to the other candidates.

Second round
Candidate A got 38 votes.
Candidate B got 38 votes.
Candidate D got 24 votes.

Candidate D is eliminated and his votes transfer to the remaining two candidates.

Third round
Candidate A got 51 votes.
Candidate B got 49 votes.

Candidate A beats Candidate B, even though he had almost 19% fewer first choice votes in round 1 than Candidate B.

Really? We want this?